Redundant, inefficient, and impractical are some of the words that come to my mind when I think about many of the new ventures and products that enter the healthcare market. That’s why when I first heard about ZocDoc I was lost for words. They challenged my knee-jerk reactions to their counterparts.

Launched in September 2007, ZocDoc is a smart and rapidly growing company that allows people to easily find a doctor or a dentist in their area and make an appointment with them online. Doctors can be searched by specialty, availability, health insurance plans, and location. You can even read user reviews and ratings of doctors and once you’re ready to make an appointment, you can do it right on ZocDoc’s website.

I recently sat down with the co-founder of the company Oliver Kharraz, MD and talked to him about his company. Oliver is an ICU physician by training and before starting ZocDoc he was a junior partner at McKinsey & Company where he focused on healthcare technology and Electronic Health Records. He started ZocDoc with a McKinsey colleague named Cyrus Massoumi in response to what he said was “an accident.” Last year Cyrus was on a flight to New York and, because he had a sinus infection at the time, ruptured his eardrum upon landing. Naturally, he was in a lot of pain but it took him a few days to find a specialist to treat him. He simply did not have the information he needed to find the first available ENT doctor in his neighborhood and his insurer’s website was clumsy and cluttered with useless information about their network of physicians, some of whom no longer practiced medicine. “This is how ZocDoc was born – a platform that allows patients to find and book doctors online, instantly” said Oliver as he sipped on his diet coke and I on a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. “Patients enjoy the fact that they can book 24/7, filter by insurance and location, and get background information and reviews on our doctors.” Doctors on ZocDoc can get a lot of exposure, which is a great way to acquire new patients and fill last minute cancellations and openings and even save time for the front office staff.

ZocDoc is free for patients and primary care specialties (family medicine, internal medicine). Soon they’ll be adding a full range of other specialties to the list. TechCrunch selected ZocDoc as one of the “40 hottest startups globally” and CNET featured them as a Webware 100 finalist for their 2008 competition.

Finally comes a healthcare technology company that adds real value to the doctor-patient experience. Well done ZocDoc.

More info: TechCrunch, Webware 100

Filed under: Innovation