MDLinx is an internet-based service for

physicians A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

and healthcare professionals provided by M3 USA Corporation. It offers physicians and other healthcare professionals a means of staying current with academic literature. The typical medical specialist needs to read 30 to 80 journal articles every day to keep up with the flow of information in their specialty. MDLinx scans, sorts, summarizes, and disseminates new literature in a digestible form. Healthcare professionals subscribe to the free service and opt to receive daily or weekly newsletters with summaries of and links to new journal articles in their areas of specialty. MDLinx users also receive information about

pharmaceuticals A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and rel ...

and Continuing Medical Education (CME) programs, and invitations to take part in paid

market research Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness. Mark ...

surveys. MDLinx currently runs sites in 34 specialties and 747 subspecialties. Clients, which include pharmaceutical companies and Continuing Medical Education (CME) institutions, use informational and promotional space on MDLinx's site and email to communicate information about their products, services and programs. MDLinx's Market Research arm provides direct access to physician panels in the US,

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

and

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...

, and access via partnerships to physician panels in other countries. According to Forrester Research, MDLinx is one of the most trafficked physician portals in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

History

Founding MDLinx was founded in 1999 by Evan Garfein, a surgical resident at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and Robert Ashton, a cardiothoracic surgical fellow at Columbia-Presbyterian. The surgeons saw a need for specialists to have access to information that was applicable to their fields. Alan Meckler, founder of high tech news publisher Mecklermedia and chief executive officer of venture capital firm

Internet.com QuinStreet, Inc. is a publicly traded marketing company based in Foster City, California. QuinStreet offers performance-based marketing and search engine marketing services. QuinStreet was founded in 1999, and has launched or acquired dozens of we ...

provided the upfront investment and

Mehmet Oz Mehmet Cengiz Öz (; born June 11, 1960), known professionally as Dr. Oz (), is an Turkish American former professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Columbia University, television presenter, author and former political candidate. The son of Tur ...

, cardiothoracic surgeon and author, served on the Board of Directors. MDLinx was the first physician portal to offer an index of over a thousand journals segmented into over seven hundred subspecialties. In early 2006, MDLinx was credited with linking a doctor to a Mongolian boy in need of a heart operation. Merger In 2006, MDLinx was fully acquired by So-net M3 USA (currently M3 USA), a wholly owned subsidiary of So-net M3 (currently ()), a leading provider of online marketing solutions to the healthcare industry in Japan and an affiliate of Sony Communication Network Corporation (currently Sony Network Communications Inc.). Currently,

Sony Corporation , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

indirectly owns 39.4％ of M3 USA. The company and its services including MDLinx are independently operated from Sony. With the merger, MDLinx expanded its offerings to healthcare professionals to include information on new drugs and CME programs. 21 Century In February 2009, MDLinx announced its acceptance into

CASRO The Insights Association, formed by the merger of the Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO) and the Marketing Research Association (MRA) in January 2017, with more than 325 member companies and their 32,000 employees, all of ...

, the

Council of American Survey Research Organizations The Insights Association, formed by the merger of the Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO) and the Marketing Research Association (MRA) in January 2017, with more than 325 member companies and their 32,000 employees, all of w ...

, the industry's leading quality benchmark. MDLinx currently has a patent pending for the way feasibility is calculated and market research is conducted on the internet.

External links

MDLinx HomepageM3, Inc. Homepage

References

{{Sony Corp 1999 establishments in Pennsylvania Internet properties established in 1999 American medical websites