When Joanna Pelot was taking a drug to battle a recurrence of breast cancer, she developed a terrible rash on her hands and arms. Her doctor and nurses hadn't seen this reaction before because the drug was so new. So Ms. Pelot, who teaches gifted, middle-school kids in Tennessee, did what she finds herself doing a lot nowadays. She went on-line. She found information about a hand cream and had her doctor get her a prescription. The rash went away.

Ms. Pelot—who says she tries to be a "partner" with her doctors—found what she needed from a drug company and from Mediconsult.8media.org (www.mediconsult.8media.org), a Web site that represents an emerging business model. Companies, quite naturally, have typically concentrated on communicating with their customers, building relationships with customers, and selling products and services to customers. Mediconsult, instead, uses its Web site to encourage people to talk to each other.

This idea of building communities and profiting from them isn't exactly a new concept to anyone who has seen the market capitalization that AOL has developed by getting users to chat with each other. But it's still a relatively new idea for companies that are in the business of selling products or services other than Internet access.

Building a community isn't always easy, either. Struggling with a life-threatening disease may drive people to find others with similar problems and may push them to find any relevant information in a way that, perhaps, they wouldn't be motivated to do when buying a toaster.

Still, the Internet lends itself to building communities, because communication is so simple, and it's easy to see how lots of businesses could build very profitable groups that revolve around them.

In Mediconsult's case, its site gives visitors access to the sort of emotional support they can get only from people going through similar problems. One group on the Mediconsult site focuses on smokers who are trying to quit. "Well, I quit smoking for four days and am right back to smoking," one wrote. "Even as I smoke, I hate it, but I can't seem to stop." Another responded: "You made four days! Do you have any idea how many times I've tried and made four HOURS! You did great."

Visitors also can get access to information that they wouldn't necessarily get from their doctors. Electronic messages posted to on-line groups for men suffering from prostate cancer, for instance, are so laden with facts and figures they read like engineering journals.

Because patients now have better information, "they regularly hold their doctors' feet to the fire," says Jeff Kane, the physician who moderates the cancer support group on the Mediconsult site. Instead of accepting the almost mass-market approach to care that prevailed in the late 1980s, these patients wind up with what "amounts to far more customized care."

People even move beyond sharing the facts and trade tips. They exchange the kind of personal information that doctors aren't likely to learn in medical school. A recent exchange on Mediconsult involved two business executives who have to deal with incontinence. One, embarrassed, wanted advice on how to discreetly carry a diaper to an airplane restroom. The other executive had a solution: hide it in an empty videocassette case.

"What doctor would know that?" asks Debora Falk, vice president of Mediconsult.

Mediconsult uses moderators such as Dr. Kane to provide a layer of expertise and credibility on top of what the patient/visitors can offer. Dr. Kane continually posts messages to offer words of encouragement or refer patients to other sites and sources that may be able to offer more information on a particular topic. He also weeds out inappropriate or errant postings. When a visitor to the prostate cancer site advised fellow sufferers to drink their own urine as a panacea, the posting was swiftly deleted.

With a community in place and growing, Mediconsult brings in about 40% of its revenue from advertising and corporate sponsorships. It gets another 40% from private-label licensing of its content and services to other sites. The rest comes from consulting services, from the site's on-line store, and from a fee-based service that lets doctors consult with specialists in certain areas. Mediconsult also conceivably has other opportunities to generate revenue. Sapient Health Network (www.shn.com), for instance, brings together patients with serious medical problems and then does population studies and collects results of surveys of patients and others using the site. Sapient then sells the information to health-care companies for use in product development and marketing. (Names are withheld.)

While patients may eventually worry about privacy or become upset that someone is profiting from information about them, those problems haven't yet surfaced. In the meantime, patients keep flocking to medical sites; the benefits can, quite literally, be life-saving. One woman in an on-line cancer support group discovered that her X-rays had been read in reverse order. The erroneous reading had prompted her doctor to call for a more rigorous chemotherapy regimen because her tumors looked like they had been growing when they actually had been shrinking.

DIGITAL DISPATCHES

Compiled By Kevin Hamilton

PAPER TIGERS

Many companies have long treated paper clips, rubber bands, and pens nonchalantly. These basics needed to be on hand, so somebody just bought a bunch and stashed them in a closet or a supply room some place. Now, a new class of software company is turning some companies into tigers about managing paper and other office supplies, ranging from inexpensive must-haves all the way up through bigger items, such as copiers, that are purchased sporadically. Over time, these companies argue that their software will be used by operations departments to manage the purchase of all the goods and services they need.

The software promises to save money partly because better management can reduce the amount of supplies that have to be kept on hand. The software also helps ensure that anyone buying from a supplier gets a good price and that all bigger-ticket items get the right approvals—or don't get the right approvals and aren't purchased. Finally, the software helps keep track of who has what, so fewer items have to be replaced.

According to Killen & Associates, a market research and consulting firm, a typical large company can save 5% of its operating resource costs and increase profits 28% by implementing what is being called an Operating Resources Management Solution. Those percentages are based on little experience, because the software is so new. But, even if they're high, the basic idea feels right. There should be significant savings here.

Here's how a system works: Let's say someone needs a notebook. He launches his Internet browser and logs in to the procurement site on his company's intranet. He navigates through his employer's custom electronic catalog of goods and services. When he clicks on an item, he is linked to the manufacturer's Web site for a more detailed description. He completes an electronic requisition form (making sure to justify himself by explaining that he needs the pad so he can take copious notes in a coming meeting with the chief executive). The form is automatically routed to the next level of approval for an electronic signature, then to the wholesaler or manufacturer of this item. The cost finds its way into the accounting database.

Ariba Technologies, the early leader in this type of software, prices its products starting at about $350,000, depending on requirements. A new version, which will incorporate travel and expense management, is to be released this fall.

For more information: www.ariba.com

THE VISION THING

When it comes to technology, smaller is better—except for those of us suffering from middle-aged farsightedness. As much as the innards of electronic devices have become tinier and cheaper over the years, they still bump up against a fundamental problem: People have to be able to read the screens on the devices.

Colorado MicroDisplay, a startup, seems to have made real progress addressing the problem. The company recently unveiled a device called CMD8X6P—the company is young; it can work on the sexy names later—that provides the resolution of a high-quality computer monitor on a tiny screen inside a lightweight headset that can be attached to any digital device. These headsets (Colorado MicroDisplay says it is trying to get away from the term "head-mounted displays," because it conjures up visions of nighttime military operations or weird, futuristic virtual reality technologies) could fit easily over a wearer's eyeglasses.

The device is based on Dynamic Nematic Liquid Crystal on Silicon technology, or DNLCOS. (Trust me, there is no English translation for this.)

Among the applications would be screenless laptops that would allow public viewing—on an airplane, for example—free of the fear of a competitor's prying eyes; portable DVD players, on which an entire two- to three-hour movie could be comfortably viewed; and Palm Pilots, from which you could view entire e-mail documents, their attachments, pictures, etc.

Now, if someone would just deal with the problems that we fat-fingered folks have trying to hit the tiny keys on some of these hand-held devices.

For more information:www.comicro.com

KEEP THESE AWAY FROM HUSBANDS AND WIVES

If you're a little shy about approaching people at industry meetings, the MIT Media Lab has come up with something that could help—or send you running from the room. MIT Media Lab's Things That Think research group has developed "Thinking Tags," smart name badges that signal how your opinions resemble or differ from those of people near you.

For instance, conference attendees might answer about half a dozen questions, each with four possible answers. Each of the 24 possible answers would be marked on a bucket. Attendees would embed their answers in their name badges by briefly dipping them into the appropriate six buckets, which would use an infrared device to "mark" microchips in the Thinking Tags. Then the fun would begin.

As attendees approached each other, the tags would figure out whether their wearers agreed or disagreed on each of the questions and would light up accordingly—green for agreement, red for disagreement. The tags are designed to be conversation starters for new acquaintances but obviously can generate new topics for chats between even the closest friends. Of course, as is always the case with new technology, one doesn't have to think too hard to come up with the possibilities for disruption. In other words, one might do well to avoid the boss or a big customer when you're both wearing these things.

Thinking Tags, which cost less than $20 apiece, also could be used at parties and singles bars. And you thought the corporate applications could be dangerous.

For more information: www.media.mit.edu

THE 133-CYLINDER ENGINE

There's now a search engine that searches search engines. That may seem odd, but actually it's high time for such a service, given the way search sites have been proliferating.

Copernic 98plus searches 133 search engines and other major providers of information, such as news and commerce sites. It groups the sites into 18 channels. You're curious about a college football score? Copernic will search its sports channel, which consists of CBS SportsLine, CNN/Sports Illustrated, and Yahoo Sports. Trying to locate a person? Copernic will search WhoWhere, BigFoot, Switchboard, and InfoSpace. Looking for a new game for your kids? Copernic will search AOL NetFind Kids, Disney, and Yahooligans. And, of course, Copernic will search through all the standard search engines—Altavista, Excite, HotBot, Lycos, etc.—when asked an open-ended question about where to find something on the Web.

Like a traditional search engine (can search engines be traditional when they've only been in popular use for two to three years?), Copernic ranks its results in terms of their likely relevance to the user. It does so in a summary that can be saved or e-mailed.

Although Copernic will not cook, do laundry, or wash dishes, it does let users add sites to be searched or make certain sites a higher priority. Copernic, which costs $29.95, also lets users designate intranets or extranets as additional channels to be searched.

The whole experience is a bit like driving a 133-cylinder sports car down an 18-lane highway. Is there such a thing as virtual whiplash?

For more information: www.copernic.com

"HAVE YOUR MACHINE TALK TO MY MACHINE..."

For all the value of voicemail, it still exists almost entirely within individual companies' borders. You can do loop-the-loops when dealing with colleagues and employees—sending group voicemails, forwarding messages, sending around faxes with voice introductions, etc. But you can't go beyond your company's borders.

That problem smells like opportunity to Open Port Technology, which plans to have a voicemail product out by year end that allows voice messages to be forwarded over the Internet. Users will push a button to initiate the service, then be guided through a menu of choices. Receivers won't need to have an Internet connection; they'll receive the message through their local phone system.

No doubt it will take a while to work out all the kinks. Some messages will certainly get intercepted by a receptionist, who will then have trouble routing the call into the corporate voicemail system. Other messages will disappear into limbo because the receiver's mailbox will be full. Hey, some people targeted to receive a message won't even have voicemail systems. What happens then?

But the idea of linking voicemail systems has great promise, if done right.

And Open Port says video mail isn't far behind.

For more information: www.openport.com

THE WIRED, WIRED WEST

A San Francisco company, NetPulse Communications, has combined two of the area's preoccupations—workout chic and the on-line world—and come up with a way to wire exercise equipment into the Internet.

NetPulse's touch-screen computers mean it's, well, no sweat for exercisers to use all the normal Web capabilities—visiting sites, searching for news and stock quotes, sending email, and so on. NetPulse also uses the Internet connection to store records for the exerciser of how many calories he's burned or minutes he's worked out in the past week, the prior month, or the lifetime of his use of NetPulse's equipment. NetPulse uses those records for promotional tie-ins, arranging to award frequent flier miles or discount coupons for music CDs based on the cumulative number of minutes worked out. NetPulse has even arranged some competitions in which people on the machines can compete against others throughout the country—forget this idea about national videogame competitions; let's feel those thighs burn!

For those not interested in surfing and stepping at the same time, NetPulse's equipment provides a hookup to cable TV and to music CDs.

There are limitations. It's hard to do much typing on a touchscreen while bobbing up and down on a Stairmaster, especially as fatigue sets in.

But there's a novelty aspect to the equipment, at least for now, and it never hurts to have some way to deal with the boredom of a serious exercise program as the hours, then weeks and months, go by.