A no-cost online news service, called MedTrackAlert, searches the Internet for news of medicinal advancements and then sends that information in a newsletter to 500,000 subscribers, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports.
Ted Smith and David Silver in April 2005 formed the company after recognizing the difficulty of finding reliable drug information online and in February 2006 launched public operations with $1 million in investor financing. MedTrackAlert started with 12 newsletters and now offers 36 covering all of the major medications for chronic conditions, Smith said.
Researchers who typically work from home write a digest of selected articles and include links to the full versions of the articles. The company has seven employees and plans to double or triple its staff this year, Smith said. Revenue from the no-cost service comes from advertising sales, many of which are pharmaceutical companies, the Courier-Journal reports.
MedTrackAlert is different from news alerts that can be created through Web sites, such as Yahoo! and Google, because it removes extraneous links and ads, Silver said. He added that the service also differs from encyclopedic sites, like WebMD, because it tends to provide more current medical information (Wolfe, Louisville Courier-Journal, 1/15).