Website for Educating Consumers of Medical Services in India : medguideindia.com

Second phase of the portal http://www.medguideindia.com was recently launched .Information available via internet, especially in India, is overwhelmingly dominated by commercial and vested interests. The goal of medguideindia.com is to provide the consumer of medical services unbiased, free, and accurate information that will help them make educated and informed decisions about medical services and related spending.

The current portal has information divided into 3 categories:

1. Drugs: We spend more time choosing a pair of shoes than selecting a medicine for a chronic illness.  Even the well-educated amongst us blindly take the prescribed medicine without finding out about cheaper alternatives or side-effects.  The major chunk of the medugideindia portal is a cross linked searchable database, which given the brand name of a drug provides not only its active composition, pricing, manufacturer information etc., but can provide all the drugs arranged by price and type with the same exact active composition. This informs consumers about cheaper alternatives to prescribed drugs.  Further there is information by categories on Banned Drugs, Imported Drugs, Recently Launched Drugs, and Drugs arranged by usage and application modality etc.

2. Immunization: Gaping holes in vaccination of Indians have prevented diseases such as polio from being eradicated from the country.  We owe it to ourselves and our kids to get educated about immunization. The next major section of medguideindia.com deals with Immunization and the role it plays in health of an individual, the types and schedules of immunization, mandatory vs. optional vs. special circumstances immunization, vaccines available in India and their prices.

3. Health Insurance: The last major part of the portal deals with the growing health insurance industry in India and how it affects us all. It details the types of health insurance plans offered, the details of the health insurance players and their offerings, the precautions to be taken while opting for a health insurance plan, the role of Third Party Administrators and precautions while opting for the same, the nature of problems faced by consumes in clearing the claim, the forums available for redressal of dispute arising out of refusal of claims and the consumer court avenues.

Please note that the portal is completely not-for-profit and is not associated with any pharmaceutical or health insurance companies. The website is completely free and has been developed with the relentless 24x7 individual efforts of Dr. M.M.Mittal over the last 7 years, who believes awareness and education are the first steps towards eradicating any problem.

Kindly use the website and spread the word so that it can benefit more people. Your comments/suggestions are very welcome.