Free Ask a Doctor Online
Whenever you're faced with a medical issue that causes some worry, it would be nice to have a resource where it's free to ask a doctor online about any of those concerns. Luckily, there is a place called Doctors Lounge where you can actually submit questions to real doctors and get answers.
About Doctors Lounge
Doctors Lounge is an online community founded in 2000 by Tamer M. Fouad, M.D. and Dr. Yasser Mokhtar, M.D. These two physicians recognized a critical need for medical professionals to have a place on the Internet where they can interface and network together, including medical students and nursing staff as well as physicians. Dr. Fouad and Dr. Mokhtar join LoveToKnow Online to discuss this amazing free resource where visitors can ask a doctor online about medical issues.
The Founding of Doctors Lounge
LoveToKnow (LTK): Could you describe a bit about the founding and history of Doctors Lounge? How was the idea for the site formulated?
Dr. Tamer Fouad (TF): First of all thank you for giving us this wonderful opportunity to share more about Doctors Lounge with LoveToKnow readers.
The whole project started back in early 2000. At that time the web was relatively new (Yahoo! was only several years old, Google only two) and people were experimenting with all sorts of ideas on the Internet. Then, it suddenly occurred to me to create a community for health professionals. I discussed this with my colleague Dr. Yasser Mokhtar and we both agreed we should give it a shot. By 2005, we were generating over a million visitors a month. Last year we were listed by Compete.com (a web traffic analysis company) as one of the top 10 websites under the health professional category.
Dr. Yasser Mokhtar (YM): Thanks, [Ryan] for this opportunity. I personally remember, back in 2000 I was working long night shifts during part of my early residency in South Dakota. Fortunately, the flow of patients was relatively low, so when Dr. Fouad talked to me, I was able to help during this early phase. Things didn't stay that way for long, though. A couple of years later, I was working as a critical care medicine fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Asking Questions at Ask a Doctor Online
LTK: Were you able to attract and retain a strong base of medical professionals willing to answer medical questions?
TF: Yes, I just want to clarify; Doctors Lounge was created and is maintained by an online community of health professionals. We provide many services and activities aimed at clinicians which include medical news, peer reviewed articles, research blogs, and medical journal and conference updates. As the name suggests, the website strives to be an online version of the hospital's "Doctors Lounge". The idea to open an "Ask a Doctor" online section in our forum to the public came later.
I still remember when our first volunteer applied. We were ecstatic! Since then we've developed a large volunteer community for the "Ask a Doctor" forum. You'd be amazed how many wonderful people there are out there. Still, with the hundreds of questions we receive each day, it gets very challenging sometimes and since this isn't the only service we provide, unfortunately, we aren't able to answer all the questions we receive.
YM: Starting the "Ask a Doctor" forum was always going to be tricky. As clinicians, we are completely aware that the Internet cannot be used to substitute for a direct medical examination. We do not want people to be misled about this. We don't provide "medical advice," and there's no such thing as medical advice on the Internet. The Internet is simply not the right medium for this type of service. We keep stressing this in all the disclaimers we've put up on our pages.
As a result, our "Ask a Doctor" online forum should be viewed as an educational tool. This is in line with our mission. By allowing our users this unprecedented level of interaction, they are able to ask the questions that concern them most. This enables us to meet their concerns more directly instead of guessing.
Privacy is another major concern with the "Ask a Doctor" forum. We actively encourage user anonymity for privacy reasons, which has the added advantage of encouraging a more frank expression of concerns.
LTK: Have you found that the questions your visitors ask are difficult to answer in any way, or are they all relatively easy to handle?
YM: Our visitors are very smart! Some of these questions are very challenging. I often find myself looking up scientific articles on the MEDLINE database or guideline updates. I think users that seek to educate themselves only start asking questions online after they've failed to find it anywhere else.
TF: Yes, add to this our topic selection process. Being the free service that it is, we receive thousands of questions, so we generally select only new questions that haven't been asked before. This usually means very difficult questions. That's how we were able to compile an extensive resource of medical answers over time.
LTK: How do you manage to keep such an excellent service free for your readers/visitors?
TF: Unfortunately for us, the website's creation (April 2000) coincided roughly with the burst of the dot com bubble (March 2000) and the declining economy that followed. This meant we initially had to finance it out of our own pockets and efforts. Doctors Lounge is currently sponsored by advertising. This also allows us to compensate some of our more regular volunteers. We're very strict about retaining complete editorial independence. What this means is that neither the ads nor the advertisers interfere with the published content that we author or the medical answers posted by our members.
The Future of Doctors Lounge
LTK: What are your future plans for Doctors Lounge? Do you hope to grow the website and service significantly?
TF: Yes, We've been running this website for close to ten years now and we've learned a lot from it. In the space of last year alone, we've introduced many new services, including an online medical conference center, monthly journal summaries, as well as our science blogs section. All of these have been very successful. We've also set up a Twitter channel with medical updates and health tips. As we grow, we aim to provide the general public with more useful services.
LTK: What do you think sets your site apart or makes it unique from other medical resources like WebMD?
TF: WebMD is a great website and a trusted source of information for both consumers and health professionals through its Medscape portal. I think the main difference would be that Doctors Lounge is designed to be more interactive in nature. User interaction makes up a larger portion of our web experience, whether it's in the form of discussions posted on our forums or the physician blogs.
YM: I think what sets us apart from other resources is that Doctors Lounge functions more like a community rather than a corporation. We all know one another and we communicate freely with one another on the private forums to discuss medical issues. In that sense, there's no high-level management steering us towards profitability. It's just something we enjoy doing tremendously and hope our visitors will find useful.
Final Words
At a time when it can be fairly difficult to obtain medical advice without visiting a doctor or the hospital and being forced to pay hospital bills, it is very refreshing that such an online resource exists where you can ask qualified medical professionals any medical question that you may have. LoveToKnow would like to thank Dr. Fouad and Dr. Mokhtar for taking the time to answer questions and help LoveToKnow Online readers learn more about Doctors Lounge and the online resources that are available there.
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