Company description
An amazing free online service that lets you ask real questions to real doctors without having to pay a single dollar. The responses are prompt and accurate to boot.
The service was started by Canada-based Dr. Suneel Sharman along with entrepreneur Prakash Chand, after they saw the need for an interactive online service for people who need a quick answer or guide to health related questions.
The main page of the site lists the most frequently asked questions as well as those that the doctors have recently answered. A search bar lets you quickly locate any particular question that you are looking for. The questions are also divided by topics and drugs, listed alphabetically in separate tabs. You can also browse three of the most popular categories easily: diet & fitness, parenting & pregnancy, and sex & beauty. There are further sub-categories in these that will help you narrow down a topic more easily. The last tab is where you can submit your own question. There’s just a simple form to fill out! Providing your email address will let you be notified when the doctor responds.
All in all, it’s a pretty awesome service!
Team
The Two Founders
Prakash Chand is the CEO of Chand Investment Group based out of Toronto, Ontario. It was started after he retired from his professional badminton career representing Canada. He has extensive knowledge in web development and advertising and his goal is to make Askthedoctor.com the world's largest easy to use medical information website for the general public.
Dr Suneel Sharman completed his residency in Family Medicine at the University of Toronto. In addition to his busy clinical practice, he has done extra training in cosmetic medicine and increased exposure to sports medicine. He is also an adjunct professor at the university of Toronto where he teaches second year medical students. His goal is to make complex medical knowledge freely available to the world.
Advisory Board
Dr. Pankaj P. Chand M.D. (Canada's youngest graduating medical doctor at age 20 and a member of MENSA)
Mrs. Neha Khera, BSc. Engineering University of Waterloo, Richard Ivey School of Business MBA Candidate 2011
Krishan Rajaratnam, Engineering Student, University of Waterloo
Business model
AskTheDoctor.com's business model is all about keeping everything very simple. Users come to the website, ask a doctor a question, get a response for free and the site is monetized with advertisers to pay for the physicians time.
Our goal is to build the worlds largest medical question and answer directory with the highest produced quality answers from our team of doctors.
Competitive advantage
Our competitive advantage is that we are:
1. a free service! nobody could imagine a real doctor answering your health question for free!
2. people remember our name "ask the doctor" very easily
3. since most of our physicians are here in North America, our quality of answers is far superior than any other published content.
4. 44 million people in the USA have no health insurance, and another 38 million have inadequate health insurance and this just might be the best advice they can get.
5. The knowledge on how to have physicians work with us. We currently have 8 physicians anwering questions daily.
6. All of our content is at the highest quality level as real doctors are building the content, not so called healthcare experts like on many of the other medical websites.
7. Our medical question asking form is always changing but designed to get the most usefull information necessary from the patient in the simplest manner possible.
8. Based out of Canada where physicians are self-regulated, we avoid any legal issues for the physicians. The waiver form that we use has been woked on together with the Canadian Medical Association (CMA).
9. By offering CME (continuing medical education) credits to physicians, physicians are able to meet their professional requirements for free as opposed to paying for the education credits - a significant cost savings to physicians.