Intel Gives Booster Shot to Online Health Services

Oct 27 1998

SAN FRANCISCO - Moving to position Intel inside the nascent online health care industry, Chairman Andrew Grove Tuesday formally launched an Internet initiative to give a booster shot to "e-health."

"Quite clearly it's in our enlightened self-interest for this process to go on, for people to use computers," Grove told a gathering of doctors, Internet entrepreneurs and journalists here at the company's Internet Health Day.

In other words, connecting the notoriously unwired health care industry to consumers will ensure demand for Intel chips. Grove also has a personal interest in Internet health issues: After he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1994, he turned to CompuServe to research his treatment options.

Intel has invested in several Internet health-related companies, from BabyCenter, a San Francisco-based information service for new parents, to Abaton.com, a Minnesota company that makes browser software for physicians. An Intel spokesman declined to reveal the size of the investments, saying only that the company typically takes equity stakes of between $1 million and $10 million.

The company also has participated in Internet-related health projects and last year formed an Internet health unit. But perhaps Intel's biggest contribution will be the publicity the world's biggest chipmaker brings to online health care.

With former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop providing the media bait, some 20 Internet health companies took advantage of the national press attention at Tuesday's conference to push their products and announce new services - among them, Koop himself. "America's doctor" earlier this year started Dr. Koop's community, an online medical information service that allows visitors to refill their prescriptions over the Internet.

Koop noted that the rise of the Internet has coincided with graying of the baby boomers and their increasing dissatisfaction with the restrictions of managed care. "They are fortunately, I think, information junkies. They want to know what's inside their doctor's head," Koop said.

Grove and Koop lamented the fact that the health care industry has lagged behind consumer demand for online medical information and services. Patients with Internet access, they said, routinely go online for health care information and support groups.

When asked how consumers can distinguish between good and bad online medical information, Koop's answer showed that even old-line icons of the medical establishment like himself have embraced the Net's mania for commodification.

"I have a brand name," the good doctor replied. "If someone says Dr. Koop gave a [Web site] four stars, it's worth looking at."