News in brief - Feb. 21, 2000

Judge bars doctor's Net prescribing

A Seattle physician lost a round in his legal fight when a King County Superior Court judge ordered him to stop prescribing Viagra and other drugs over the Internet while he awaits a June 1 state hearing.

Judge Larry Jordan refused to extend a temporary order issued by a court commissioner in January that allowed Howard Levine, MD, to continue his Internet practice.

King County Court Commissioner Marilyn Sellers' ruling had temporarily halted an order from the state Medical Quality Assurance Commission that told Dr. Levine to stop prescribing drugs over the Internet.

Dr. Levine, a Seattle gynecologist, has written Viagra prescriptions for thousands of Internet patients he has never examined in person. He has been accused of prescribing Viagra to a 16-year-old boy and to a woman posing as a man.

Shared Medical Systems Corp. and drkoop.com Inc. have formed an alliance under which the Malvern, Pa.-based health care technology company will market the online health and medical content of drkoop.com to its more than 2,000 hospitals and health care organizations.

Under the nonexclusive agreement, the two companies also will co-market SMS' Physician Dashboard product, enabling physicians affiliated with or employed by hospitals using SMS' information systems to access data through the Internet, said Molly Grasso, SMS' spokeswoman.

Austin, Texas-based drkoop.com brings 1 million registered consumers to the alliance. "What we're trying to do is cement the link between physicians, health care organizations and consumers," Grasso said.

ChannelHealth, a subsidiary of IDX Systems Corp., a physician practice management software company in Burlington, Vt., and Merck-Medco Managed Care, Franklin Lakes, N.J., are jointly developing an Internet-based prescription management system.

The system would enable physicians to order prescriptions for members of Merck-Medco and access their medication histories and check for medication errors over the Internet. The system also would alert doctors if patients with chronic illnesses fail to refill their prescriptions.

A division of online health firm adam.com Inc. is allowing more than 7,000 trial lawyers access to its database of online medical illustrations, products and other services.

That means the lawyers will have quicker and easier access to research and materials they may want to present during lawsuits regarding personal injury, workers' compensation and medical negligence.

The attorneys will be able to download more than 10,000 illustrations and exhibits from Lido.com, the adam.com subsidiary that negotiates with state- and Canadian province-level lawyers' associations to make the materials available. In return, Lido.com said it would participate in unspecified marketing and business development opportunities.

San Francisco-based adam.com publishes and distributes over the Internet health research materials. It also operates a consumer Web site.