Indegene's plans come even as it is expected to go in for another round of funding-estimated at $6-7 million - for its second phase of expansion into the area of "connected healthcare systems integrated with mobile computing". Indegene's mobile system will be rolled out into multiple global markets in the next 12 months.

Indegene, which had been valued at Rs 15 crore in the first round of funding, is also supported by Lama Partners, a Hong Kong-based offshoot of Deutsche Bank.

Indegene Lifesystems managing director Rajesh Nair said that on completion of phase one, the site expects to utilise the resources of its proposed overseas partners (similar plans have been firmed up in Malaysia & Singapore) to develop innovative CME packages, while the back-end operations would be provided by Indegene. The online medical education market targeted by Indegene is estimated to be worth Rs 60 crore currently and expected to grow to Rs 1,000 crore in the next five years.

High quality information will be leveraged for CME programmes for the physicians which will be provided on a subscription basis. Indegene expects to rake in atleast Rs 10 crore on CME programmes alone over the next two years.

The demand for CME is expected to grow manifold once the Indian medical fraternity moves towards accepting the accreditation concept. There has been strong pressure on the Indian Medical Associations to introduce a system similar to that in the US wherein doctors have to accumulate a specified number of CME hours to maintain their licence to practice.

Indegene expects to leverage its existing relationships with major knowledge centers to generate the content for its online medical education initiative.

The site already has alliances with medical associations in the areas like neurology, gastroenterology etc; leading doctors from academic institutions like AIIMS, Tata Memorial, NIMHANS etc; and national medical conferences.

Sigificantly, Indegene plans to compensate both doctors and institutes associated with it, for their inputs, via royalties.

Indegene Lifesystems director Rohit M Bhojaraj said that technology will be used as an enabler for making value added information dissemination possible eg. Webcasting, real audio and video. Indegene is expected to break even a year and a half down the line.

Bhojaraj added that online education will form bulk of the first year revenues for Indegene while healthcare transactions generated from the Indegene-connected system will form the bulk of revenues from year two onwards.

Indegene currently has a host of tie-ups - with Canadian medical search engine, Mamma.com; the US-based CriticalPath for its e-mail facility; and with Firstandsecond.com for e-commerce. The alliance with Firstandsecond accords a e-book store on the Indegene site, where a specialist can view and shop for scientific books and medical journals. In fact, Indegene is the first medical site in the country providing direct integration with the US National Library of Medicine's Medline database.

Bhojaraj added that Indegene had also acquired the rights for three leading Indian scientific books wherein the authors are compensated either via a lupmsum payment or an annual fee. The authors, in turn, become part of the Indegene scientific team and will be available for online chats, etc.