Physician's calculator

A California physician sells software that lets doctors quickly run medical calculations and access information through handheld devices.

By Tyler Chin, amednews staff. July 14, 2003.

Making sidelines pay
Doctors who branched out beyond running their practice tell why they did it, how they did it, and what you should know before you do it. Contribute

Name: Grant Fraser, MD

Specialty: Emergency medicine

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Region: West

Location: Santa Rosa, Calif.

Business: Medical Wizards Corp. Sells handheld-based medical calculator, billing, coding and medical reference software to doctors, nurses, med students, pharmacists and paramedics.

Annual revenue: $350,000

Why he started the business: While working as an emergency doctor in Texas in 1998, Dr. Fraser instructed a nurse to start a nitroglycerin drip, but saw she had set it up to run at a higher rate than he requested.

"I pulled her aside and said, 'Wait a second. I don't think that's right. ... [L]et's sit down and calculate this.' ... She had looked at a little triangulation chart they used and made a simple mistake. That's when I started thinking there's got to be a better way," said Dr. Fraser, who was a computer programmer prior to becoming a physician.

"A lot of it [also] has really been from my experience as a practicing physician where, for example, I'm looking at x-rays of the hand and I see a bone in the middle of the hand and say, 'Darn, I don't know what that is. I'm going to have to look at a book.' "

Why he keeps practicing: "To keep up my skills and ... get a good feel for what [health care professionals] need."

Words of wisdom: He advises against spending money on advertising. "Almost all Internet businesses went out of business because of their public relations expenditures," Dr. Fraser said. "My philosophy is build a good product ... keep improving it, put it in places where people can find it, get yourself a decent reputation and grow it naturally rather than [spend] a huge amount of money on advertising."