We're rolling out our slate of eHealth Innovators. Xoova is the 1st of 10; see the whole list in coming weeks on our blog, to the right.
Here we interview Tommy McGloin, Founder/CEO of Santa Monica, CA-based Xoova. Xoova is to doctors like OpenTable.com is to restaurants.
Read the WSJ this month: A Family Doctor Considers Double-Booking Patients and No-Show Patients Exact a Daily Toll to see the scope of the problem Xoova can help solve.
But we mainly like Xoova because of our Trend #9: "The Rise of Minute Clinics, and Virtual Doctors." Today this bold eHealth Innovator can save time/hassle for patients & doctors alike re: appointment setting. Tomorrow? They could facilitate virtual appointments.
See our Interview with the 1st Virtual Doctor, Jay Parkinson, if you don't believe.
1. Tell us about the impetus to start Xoova, and your biggest learning to date?
ANSWER: I was looking for an orthopedic surgeon for my daughter, and found myself on a Yellow Pages Web site. I thought there must be a better, richer directory of doctors and medical services out there, but didn't find one on the Web. There's so much information about other local categories (auto, real estate, employment, personals, city guides) but very little about local doctors and medical services. To date, our biggest learning has been that consumers love pictures of doctors.
2. What problem does Xoova solve for consumers?
ANSWER: Xoova helps consumers find doctors by location, specialty, treatment, condition and health plan affiliation, and lets them review enhanced profiles to know more about areas of special expertise and clinical interest. Xoova gathers heterogeneous information found all over the Web and puts it in a uniform, easily searchable, homogeneous directory structure. Xoova lets patients know more about a doctor or practice in advance of a care encounter.
3. What problem does Xoova solve for physicians?
ANSWER: Xoova takes a problem for physicians -- their representation on the Internet -- and turns it into a solution. Physicians control their profile on Xoova, where they share much more about care philosophy and practice than they can on insurance company physician directories and other doctor directories. Xoova complements a physician or practice's own Web site: Xoova tends to be better indexed in search engines, and Xoova profiles include links to practice Web sites.
4. How are your current audience metrics, and what are you doing to drive traffic?
ANSWER: In March of 2008, Xoova had 75,000 unique visitors. Traffic has grown at the rate of 35% per month since the site launched in July 2007. All traffic is organic and unpaid. Google is the dominant source of traffic to Xoova.
5. How do you monetize the site?
ANSWER: Xoova is ad-supported. It runs both graphical CPM advertising and pay-for-performance advertising.
6. What 2-3 firms are your key competitors, and how are you different?
ANSWER: Healthgrades.com, Ucomparehealthcare.com and Vitals.com are Xoova competitors. Xoova is much more of a Health 2.0 site -- where physicians provide content and consumers rate and review doctors.
7. Regarding audience, are you Direct-to-Consumer, working through partners on a private-label or other basis, or both?
ANSWER: Xoova is a consumer-facing, branded experience for finding local doctors and medical services.
8. What do you have coming soon that we should know about?
ANSWER: In a couple months, Xoova is re-launching on a Wiki platform. We expect our 65,000 enhanced physician profiles to grow dramatically in number and quality as it becomes easier for doctors and their practices to generate content on Xoova.
UPDATE: Xoova shut its doors in August 2008. The site, which was funded by Spark Capital, started as DoctorsDirect.com and renamed itself Xoova in February of 2007. The firm had received $2.5M in funding from Spark Capital. Xoova had started as a service to provide doctors with an online appointment scheduling service, and had created a nationwide directory of doctors and services.
Read more in our 150-page SPOTLIGHT REPORT, updated each month. We carve out four discrete segments in eHealth, and tell you what's happening, how and why, including detailed revenue projections:
a. News/Search/Community
b. EMR
c. PHR
d. Digital Home Health.
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