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By Rick Dana Barlow

Wall Street may have soured on the initial sweetness of Internet-related initial public offerings and new online business-to-business marketplaces, but the healthcare industry apparently doesn't care.

Witness the growth of online B2B exchanges in the fiercely competitive healthcare market for medical products and services from fewer than 20 different places on which to click last fall to more than 60 today.

In our latest compilation, we've located 61 different sites offering medical supplies and equipment and other features to hospitals, non-acute care facilities, physicians, and nurses.

We purposefully excluded the following: websites operated by vendors who manufacture and/or distribute products as their primary revenue source (e.g., Cardinal.com, Omnicell.com, and the two new healthcare exchanges established by separate groups of manufacturers and distributors), consumer-oriented physician sites (e.g., WebMD.com, Medsite.com), and websites that only offer product information without an actual e-commerce function (e.g., ThomasRegister.com, DeviceLink.com).

However, we have included those e-commerce marketplaces at least partially owned and operated by group purchasing organizations, due to the recent investments by Premier Inc. into Medibuy.com, Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. into EmpactHealth.com, and Tenet Healthcare Corp. into Broadlane.com.

Our listing shows the following:

• All 61 offer product catalogs or hyperlinks to vendors to submit orders.
  
• 29 offer some type of online auction capabilities for equipment, either directly on their sites or through related links.
  
• 40 offer self-promotional press releases, links to online newswires or summaries of selected news stories that appeared in print publications.
  
• 18 offer online discussion forums and chat rooms for professionals to interact.
  
• Nine offer original news reporting of industry events and issues.
  
• Seven offer clinical research reports or consumer-oriented information.

Here are the sites in alphabetical order (the newest additions are highlighted in bold typeface):

¹ Home Health Provider.com, Hospital Network.com, Long Term Care Provider.com and Nurses.com are properties of VerticalNet Inc.
² Neoforma.com entered into a strategic alliance with VerticalNet in November 1999.
³ These sites are geared primarily to physician practices.
⁴ These sites are geared primarily to ambulatory surgery centers and clinics.
⁵ Promedix.com and SpecialtyMD.com are properties of Ventro Corp., and Broadlane.com is a co-venture between Ventro and Tenet Healthcare Corp.
⁶ MedicalMailOrder.com, NurseSupplies.com and PhysicianEquipment.com are sister Web sites.
⁷ EquipMD is owned by Neoforma.com Inc.
⁸ Innovatix was launched as a separate company by GNYHA Ventures and is geared primarily to the non-acute care market.
⁹ These sites are geared primarily to the chronic care market (e.g., nursing homes, assisted living facilities).
¹⁰ These sites are properties of BizProLink Corp.

Source: Hospital Network.com, sister website to Medical Design Online.