Most pharma majors for instance have either finalised alliances with portals already or are in the process of doing so. While Nicholas Piramal is set to enter into a full fledged partnership with horizontal India-specific portal Go4i.com, Mumbai-based health portal Goodhealthnyou is in dialogue with a slew of pharma majors to tie them in as channel partners for the various disease related/specific channels that the site plans. And there's lots of business to cash in on too. Figures culled from the foreign media reckons the combined online market for healthcare products and prescription drugs will grow from $200 million in 1999 to $9.8b by 2004. Moreover, unlike most other sectors where break-even time frames are rather hazy, health portals back home project encouraging results.

While the New Delhi-based Galaxyofhealth has already "reached break-even in January 2000", Meditimes hopes to break even by this fiscal (break-even in terms of offline marketing and manpower costs will occur by September). MDSpeak, which is relatively younger than Galaxyofhealth and Meditimes, expects to break even during the first half of 2001. Goodhealthnyou, which is part of the ideasnyou umbrella of portals, expects to break even in another two and a half years

Here's how these portals plan to rake in the moolah, though advertising revenues are a common feature. Says Galaxy Communications CEO Dr Vikram Sharma, "We have multiple revenue streams in place, the first and foremost being advertising and sponsorships on the site. So far, some of the leading PSUs that have advertised on the portal are New India Assurance and Oriental Insurance, both of which had a tremendous inquiry response to their banners".

Sharma, however, said that the biggest revenue stream will come from the sales of a pocketable patient information device, capable of holding a patient's medical records and confidential information. The device, he says is the first of its kind in the world and has been jointly developed by the Canadian arm of Galaxyofhealth and an American company for global distribution.

Galaxyofhealth, which was born in 1998, is the longest running health portal in India and Sharma claims that the site offers the highest degree of interactivity between doctors and patients on the portal. The site provides free online medical consultation and even does its bit on free medical and surgical treatment for the needy.

Meditimes, on the other hand, is a portal specially designed to network and develop India's vast medical community. Meditimes is promoted by Portal Solutions which in turn is backed Dr Reddy's Holdings and venture capitalists IIQ Investments. Portal Solutions director K Ravindra says that Meditimes is looking at revenue streams from offline and online marketing services (in areas like medical equipment) and inflows from sampling and sampling distribution services.

MDspeak, which aims at servicing the information needs of the healthcare sector of the Indian economy, claims that it averages 62,000 page views per month, even as the average time spent on site has risen from six minutes in the recent past to 10 minutes currently.

The fledgling MDspeak which expects revenue inflows to commence from the third quarter of the current fiscal, says that it will be involved in transactions related to medical services. The portal, which envisages a role for itself in the health insurance sector, also expects to generate revenues from the sale of market intelligence to pharma companies, syndication of the portal's content and even intermediation in the marketing of health-care related products and and services including risk management services.

Goodhealthnyou projects about four revenue streams. These range from e-commerce which encompasses the sale of drugstore products, books and exercise equipment among others. Interactive brand building with pharma companies, subscription services and content selling.

And now for the eyeballs. GoodHealthNyou, MDspeak, Meditimes and Galaxyofhealth - together garnered close to 45 lakh hits per month. The specifics: Goodhealthnyou, a recent entrant has seen 1.5 million page views in the last month and half, MDspeak attracted an average of 89,800 hits per month, Meditimes averages 3.5 lakh to four lakh hits per month while Galaxyofhealth got over 2.5 million hits in May 2000 alone. Did someone say that healthcare has been behind the curve?.

If the classic premise for building B2C e-commerce sites viz the creation of content, community and commerce is anything to go by, health portals seem to have a bright future. Those with strong content for instance are likely to create a captive audience when it comes to health related information and when it comes to commerce, these portals are intermediaries for products and services where consumer resistance is generally at its lowest.