Clear Lobby: The iMedicor’s Business Plan

We recently met with the leadership of iMedicor and learned about their software for HIPAA-compliant medical information transmission, a social network that they not only hope will replace the frustrating fax-and-mail reliance we have today, but actually fulfill Obama’s mandate for a national health information exchange (previously on Medgadget).

We were curious, though — since physician / nurse / clerk / patient sign-up to the service is free, and using the software, building contacts, and sending information around the world is also free… just how are these folks planning to make any money?
It turns out, they’ve given this some thought. And they’ve settled on a strategy that, while note actually proven, has been put into practice before — namely, charging drug reps for access to physicians.

After logging into iMedicor, docs can browse contacts, send secure messages, and browse educational material on a platform called Clear Lobby. This area of the site hosts content, including materials supplied by the pharmaceutical and device industries. Peer reviewed literature, package inserts, and clinical trial data will be hosted here.
What’s more, docs can discuss this information with drug reps online. Contacts can only be initiated by physicians, and can be built around an article or more free-form.
iMedicor says this arrangement means everyone wins — docs get individualized access to reps on demand, as opposed to during lunch breaks or in large group sessions. And Pharma gets much cheaper access to physicians online (compared to in person) at a time where they’re facing increasing barriers to access in hospitals and offices.
What’s yet to be determined is how much of your online activities the drug reps will have access to — since iMedicor offers up contacts, messaging, and educational content, physician behavior can be well described, and this information would no doubt be valuable to reps.
We’re betting that Clear Lobby’s success or failure rides on iMedicor’s implementation of drug rep access. If conversations are truly physician-initiated and flow naturally from educational materials, this could fly. If it’s at all intrusive, clunky or seems slick, our guess is docs will stay away. And if that happens, well, all the rest of iMedicor’s features aren’t going to pay for themselves (at least, that’s not the current plan).