Facilitating the leap of Australian medical practitioners to the online space, eClinic - an aggregator of online medical services - has announced the launch of its website www.eclinic.com.au.

In its initial phase, eClinic enables practitioners to securely and conveniently receive their patients' pathology and radiology test results over the internet. The initial roll out within Victoria has been partnered with the Gribbles group, with the rest of Australia soon to follow.

The eClinic website is a gateway to a range of online services for practitioners. Apart from diagnostic test results, doctors can access the latest medical news and request drug samples from pharmaceutical companies. eClinic is on-track to introduce other online services through its web site, such as purchasing supplies of medical consumables, lodging claims with Medicare, interacting with other practitioners, and accessing medical directories, reference information and online training materials.

Medical practitioners are set to benefit significantly from eClinic's services, being able to call on the information that they need for their clinical and non-clinical research and decision making whenever and wherever they need it. Dr. Ngai from Dandenong states that being able to access test results online is "very efficient and convenient for the practice". Dr. Lynn Hall from Hawthorn agrees, and notes that eClinic's online results delivery system integrates seamlessly with her patient management software. Further, she finds very convenient, the ability to access a patient's pathology and radiology test results as soon as the result is processed.

Medical service providers such as diagnostic labs, pharmaceutical companies, and suppliers will also benefit by being able to provide a better level of service through the eClinic web site at lower costs to themselves.

eClinic's founders and executive directors, Mr. Saurabh Mishra and Mr. Sanjiv Puri believe that a transaction based business model like theirs makes sense in the medical industry. Says Mishra, "After all, the primary health industry processes nearly a billion transactions a year, exchanging vast amounts of information across multiple parties.

"Where the internet comes into its own is that it offers a cost-effective and standardised delivery channel for information which is universally accessible. Of course this also makes it particularly susceptible to security threats, and online security has been of paramount concern to us in designing, developing and managing our services."

Both Mr.Mishra and Mr. Puri say that their online security solution is based on state-of-the art Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology, employing digital certificates and tightly defined registration, authentication and encryption processes.

"Most importantly," says Puri, "we haven't started by trying to conquer the world. Our approach is to invest our resources in fully developing one new service at a time; starting with those services that make most sense given the level of acceptance and usage of the internet in clinics. Delivering pathology and radiology test results over the internet seemed to fit the bill, so that's where we started. We were lucky to get Gribbles as our first client, as they have been a great, visionary partner."

eClinic started operations in May 2000, on the basis of funding from Capital Creation, a financial planning firm. The executive directors, advisory board and staff involved with eClinic bring together extensive health industry experience, strategy, management, and information technology experience.