Surgeon's new operation: software company

The Tampa endocrinologist's YourDoctor.com, which enables patients to follow a navigational map to get information about a health condition, has evolved into InterMap Technologies.

By KRIS HUNDLEY

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 13, 2000

Nine months ago, Dr. James Norman was a Tampa surgeon with an idea for an e-health site called YourDoctor.com and $10-million in venture capital.

Today, he's the chairman of InterMap Technologies, a software company with 62 employees in Berkeley, Calif.

Same company, same idea, just taken to the next level.

And the company's new profile happens to be considerably more attractive to investors who are bummed on business-to-consumer sites but hot on technology that promises to make the Internet more efficient.

"Successful companies have to be able to morph," said Norman, 41, who commutes to Berkeley weekly from his home in North Tampa. "We don't think of ourselves as a dot-com anymore; we think of ourselves as an infrastructure company. But nine months ago, I didn't know what infrastructure meant."

Norman's experience is a vivid example of the twists and turns that keep new economy companies agile -- or doom them to quick extinction.

A year ago, Norman's Web concept was simple: YourDoctor.com would recruit thousands of top doctors, all experts in their fields, as contributors. Then patients, many of them presumably referred to the Web site by their physicians, would follow a highly detailed navigational map to find information on their specific condition.

The map would not be intended to replace diagnosis by a private physician, Norman said, but instead would provide patients with accurate and appropriate information once a diagnosis was made.

Rather than simply typing in "breast cancer," for instance, visitors would identify where they were on the breast cancer map, from discovery of a lump to post-mastectomy. There they would find accurate information about the specific disease state, treatment options and chat rooms with people at the same stage.

"There are seven different types of breast cancer and four stages of each one," said Norman, who dismisses consumer e-health sites such as WebMD and drkoop as too superficial. "Existing health sites offer information that's a mile wide and an inch deep. Each node on our map is an inch wide but a mile deep."

YourDoctor.com's section on breast cancer, for instance, contains about 350 different decision points, directing visitors down specific paths based on their response.

Norman, a former professor at University of South Florida's College of Medicine, is a believer in specialization. As an endocrinologist who developed a minimally invasive operation for endocrine tumors in the neck, he set up his own Web site, Endocrineweb.com, to spread the word. That led to his development of other specialty sites aimed at doctors and patients. Among them: melanoma.net and breastdoctor.com.

From his isolated outposts on the Internet, Norman saw consumers being overwhelmed, and often unnecessarily alarmed, by information on most e-health sites. So did fellow doctors he approached for help. Dr. Ron Rosenfeld is physician-in-chief at Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland, Ore., and a specialist in pediatric endocrinology.

"Patients come to me with information they've gotten off the Internet and much of it is incorrect, out of date or not particularly appropriate," said Rosenfeld, who is overseeing development of content for YourDoctor.com's map on pediatric endocrinology. When completed in early October, the section will have 100 chapters, each written by an expert in the specific field.

As Norman recruited top doctors to contribute to his site, he attracted venture capital, including JHK Investments of New York and Vantage Point Venture Partners of San Bruno, Calif.

Stefan Dolezalek, a partner at Vantage Point, said he was impressed by Norman's panel of experts and unique mapping concept. But he adds that a proposal for a consumer health site would get a much different response today.

"If it had been nine months later, he would have had zero chance of getting it funded," Dolezalek said. "The difference is, now the company is an infrastructure play. It's a database management tool."

Norman said the transformation from an out-of-favor B2C concept to a sexy software company didn't occur in response to market conditions. Instead, he said the transition took place gradually as the company's first employees began scribbling ideas on white boards and turning them into software code.

Steven Berkowitz, who was recruited as president and chief executive in December, recalled two "epiphanies."

"The biggest change came in March, when we disconnected the maps from the content and realized that the maps were the intellectual property that was unique," he said. "They're a way to manage databases, and they're applicable whether it's health care or law or finance."

For instance, someone in the market for a 401(k) could follow a map that takes into consideration age, income and family status, then presents a list of appropriate products from several companies.

The second awakening came when the company recognized something that financially struggling e-health sites have learned the hard way: Insurers, not consumers, ultimately decide what medical service will be purchased.

"We realized that everybody is already owned by somebody," Berkowitz said. "So do we really need to create our own (Web) destination or do the insurers need the platform and the tools?"

Which is why Norman and Berkowitz have held meetings with such health care players as Kaiser Permanente, Aetna and HCA (formerly known as Columbia/HCA), as well as software giant Oracle.

The plan now is to license the software for an upfront royalty, as well as a monthly fee. Like a cable TV company, InterMap Technologies will provide the infrastructure and basic channels, such as YourDoctor.com's expert medical content. (Norman said the law prohibits insurers from withholding information even if it's not covered by their plan so there's no danger that costly treatment alternatives will be censored.)

Under the new revenue model, InterMap also will get a share of any transaction on its system, whether it's a hospital buying catheters or a diabetic buying a book.

That's particularly appealing to Berkowitz, who formerly was president and publisher of IDG Books Worldwide Inc., owner of the Dummies books that provide simplified tutorials for everything from computer software to auto repair. In his five years with IDG, company revenues grew to $179.8-million from $49.2-million.

While IDG made money on books, Berkowitz had the nagging feeling it was missing out on the big action. Though the Dummies manuals gave people information that often led to a purchase, IDG never got a commission on the transaction.

"I saw the Internet as the third dimension, where you can put people in context, then present them with prefiltered goods and services," Berkowitz said. "It's the only way to monetize on the Web. And you can market to someone without knowing anything about them but their particular need."

Berkowitz, who runs day-to-day operations in Berkeley, said he expects the company to be profitable by June 2002.

"It's foreign to me not to think about making money," he said. "We're getting amazingly good response when people see the model and put it into their own world. We've never been rejected from a meeting or not called back for a second one."

No deals have yet been signed, however. And with the initial round of financing draining at a steady clip, the company has started pounding doors to raise another $25-million.

Norman, who makes most of the venture capital pitches, said he's optimistic InterMap will get more money. But he admits that life as an Internet entrepreneur is far different from his past life as a surgeon and professor.

"Then, excitement was when you got called in at 3 a.m. to do surgery on somebody who got shot over $5 of crack," he said. "This has been a much bigger roller coaster ride. Some days are great, and some days I think we're going to close tomorrow."

To date, he's managed the cross-country commute. (He closed a small, 10-person office in Tampa in late June.) His wife, Dr. Gail Norman, is a family practice doctor in North Tampa; the couple have two children, ages 6 and 9.

"I try to work at home a few days each week, and the kids have their computer next to mine, downloading songs through Napster," he said. "Last week, I was in five cities in five days, but I'm having more fun now than I ever had in medicine."

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