WebMD is an American corporation which provides health news, advice, and expertise. It was founded in 1996 by Jim Clark and Pavan Nigam as Healthscape, later Healtheon, and then acquired WebMD in 1999 from Robert Draughon to form Healtheon/WebMD. The name was later shortened to WebMD.
Traffic
WebMD is primarily known for its public website, which has information regarding health and health care, including a symptom checklist, pharmacy information, drugs information, blogs of physicians with specific topics and a place to store personal medical information.
In the first quarter of 2007, WebMD had the highest number of unique page visits compared to other leading private and government healthcare websites. and by February 2011, WebMD’s network of sites was reaching an average of 86.4 million visitors per month and is the leading health portal in the United States.
As of February 2014, WebMD has recorded an average of 156 million unique visitors per month and 3.17 billion page views per quarter.
Accreditation
URAC, the largest accrediting body for health care, has accredited WebMD’s operations in everything from proper disclosures and health content to security and privacy continuously since 2001.
Revenues
In 2013, the Chicago Tribune reported that WebMD, "has struggled with a fall in advertising revenue with pharmaceutical companies slashing marketing budgets as several blockbuster drugs go off patent." In response, WebMD was investing in changes to its site the company hopes will entice users who use its site seeking specific information to then linger on the site reviewing other material.
Business model
WebMD is financed by advertising, third-party contributions and sponsorships.
WebMD also offers services to physicians and private clients. For example, they publish WebMD the Magazine, a patient-directed publication distributed bimonthly to 85 percent of physician waiting rooms. Medscape is a professional portal for physicians with 30 medical specialty areas and over 30 physician discussion boards. WebMD Health Services provides private health management programs and benefit decision-support portals to employers and health plans.
The WebMD Health Network operates WebMD Health and other health-related sites including: Medscape, MedicineNet, eMedicine, eMedicineHealth, RxList, theheart.org, Medscape Education, and other-owned WebMD sites. These sites provide similar services to those of WebMD; MedicineNet is an online media publishing company. Medscape offers up-to-date information for physicians and other healthcare professionals. RxList offers detailed information about pharmaceutical information on generic and name-brand drugs. eMedicineHealth is a consumer site offering similar information to that of WebMD. It was first based on the site created for physicians and healthcare professionals called eMedicine.com.
Criticism
Allegations have been made that WebMD biases readers towards using drugs sold by their pharmaceutical sponsors in cases in which the drug is unnecessary.
References
External links
- WebMD (corporate website)
- WebMD Health (consumer website)
- Medscape (physician website)
- MedicineNet (MedicineNet website)
- RxList (drugs and medications website)
- eMedicineHealth (consumer first aid and health information website)
- Boots WebMD (UK consumer website)
- WebMD Health Services (private portal website)
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