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Putting med-info just a click away

doctorsofbangladesh.com

SYED TASHFIN CHOWDHURY
THE first ever doctor's and medical service portal of the nation, doctorsofbangladesh.com, has been receiving substantial responses from medical facilities and institutions despite their rough start.
The portal, initiated two years back, started off small. Information and membership from doctors were collected rather tediously - the developers literally had to go door-to-door.
Presently, the portal has information on over a thousand doctors and medical facilities from all over the country. The index of the portal links to sections such as -- Hospitals & Clinics, Emergency, Diagnostic Centres, Medical Institutes, Health Tips, News, Online Prescription, Online Doctors Membership and Pharmaceuticals.
On becoming members of the site doctors will be able to access the members' area where they will be able to check their records and emails.
The Emergency section contains an important collection of contact numbers of various Ambulance Services, Hospitals, Blood and Eye banks.
The Health Tips section is quite informative with vital information and tips on diseases and syndromes, as
well as on daily medical habits.
The News section contains articles and information on the local medical sector.
Online Prescription provides mailing access to some selected doctors for enquiries on symptoms and medical problems. Clicking on any given doctor according to the field that he or she is specialising in, a questionnaire pops up. By filling up the form and providing necessary information the browser/patient would receive an email from doctors prescribing correct medication depending on the condition and symptoms of the patient.
Last but not the least, the Doctor's search engine is one of the main facilities of the site. The database holds details of more than a thousand doctors and search results can be obtained by searching through categories like the name of the doc-
tor, specialised filed and city where he or she is practising.
The site's navigation is a bit sloppy. No inter-link between the inner sections and just a single link to the home page makes it harder to navigate. A well designed navigation system and branching the directory type sections under one primary section might make things easier and less confusing for most browsers. The News and Health Tips section should also be replenished periodically. Worldwide medical links and news would also be useful in addition to local news.
When approached with these suggestions, the designer and developers were open to the idea of making site improvements. They cited the huge lack of response from medical sources in the beginning as the main factor behind such inadequacies.
The lifetime membership fee for
doctors is Taka 500. "Hopefully we shall be able to make doctorsofbangladesh.com a specific and efficient medical portal, in the near future," said Tanvir Hassan, assistant manager, Tech Domain, the developers of the portal.
The portal wishes to include search engines for Blood Banks where blood groups of site-members can be easily obtained along with the members contact information.
At present, Tech Domain is trying to contact both local and foreign doctors to enhance the site with the medical journals from in and around the globe.
The site was nominated for the World Summit Award 2003 last December. Hopefully, with the necessary improvements it will actually be useful and win more awards in the upcoming years.