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Building the First Global Community of Doctors

A conversation with Dr. Frank Antwerpes, President, DocCheck Medical (See guest bio).

Aired LIVE on: Thursday, 6 December 2007

Background

DocCheck® establishes worldwide community of healthcare professionals

Cologne, 5 December 2007 - Following the successful launch of the DocCheck® Faces network in Germany, DocCheck, the leading community for medical professionals in Europe, is now making its social networking package available in other countries. The Italian version is already online. English, Spanish and French versions will follow in January 2008. The English version is also aimed at the US market. Within DocCheck Faces, medical practitioners can put their profile on show, set up their own forums and exchange news with colleagues.

In addition to the new community, services such as DocCheck Litbot (a program for managing medical publications) and the English-language DocCheck e-journal will be available to US physicians.

"Our aim is to establish a global community of healthcare professionals, thereby significantly improving international exchanges between physicians", explains Dr. Frank Antwerpes, DocCheck's CEO.

Over half a million registered users worldwide
With over 500,000 users, DocCheck is one of the most heavily subscribed medical portals in the world. Around 8,000 new DocCheck users register each month. While growth was primarily concentrated in Europe up to 2006, the number of users outside the EU has increased disproportionately in recent months. Already one in two physicians in Germany, where the community was first introduced, is a member of DocCheck.

Some Questions/Topics Covered

• Why did you decide to bring DocCheck to other countries, especially the US?
• Who you see as your competition and how do you plan to deal with them?
• Please describe some of the interesting features of DocCheck, including DocCheck Faces, DocCheck Litbot, and the English-language DocCheck e-journal

Dr. Frank Antwerpes
The DocCheck® Medical Services Chief Executive Officer is a physician and dentist, who also worked as a freelance copywriter and conceptor for advertising agencies and industrial enterprises during his studies.

In 1996 he had the idea to provide an online community for healthcare professionals. The DocCheck® Medical Services GmbH was founded in 1999 after the community starts to getting bigger and the services were enlarged.

With more than 500,000 users worldwide today, the simple idea of a place their healthcare professionals can come together turned out to be a huge success - for DocCheck® and their users.