AOL co-founder Case launches health Web site

By Lisa Richwine

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Internet entrepreneur Steve Case launched a health Web site on Thursday, hoping to draw millions of consumers with free services such as online medical records, doctor ratings and disease information.

The America Online co-founder and one of the architects of that company's troubled merger with Time Warner, named the venture Revolution Health and has invested $100 million of his own money.

Revolution Health aims to shake up a fragmented and bureaucratic health-care system that Case said leaves patients and caregivers frustrated.

Consumers, for example, can easily find ratings on movies and restaurants but not on doctors, he said.

"Our mission is to revolutionize the health-care system," Case said in an interview. The key, he added, is "empowering consumers to take more control of their health and their families' health."

A test site started running at Revolutionhealth.com in January and drew more than 1 million visitors, Case said.

The site officially launched on Thursday and includes calculators for people to assess their chances of developing a heart attack, stroke or diabetes, a symptom checker to figure out what a pain or dizziness might mean, and an option to create a customized page of health topics.

Building health Web sites has proved challenging for others. Netscape co-founder Jim Clark, pronounced he would "fix the U.S. health-care industry" when he took his company Healtheon public in 1999.

Healtheon eventually merged with WebMD Health Corp., which struggled for years before becoming profitable.

Competition for an audience abounds, with a wealth of information already available from the National Institutes of Health and many others.

Case said he see an opportunity to build a dominant brand and become the Starbucks, Coke or Pepsi of the health-care field. In addition to getting information, patients can store medical information electronically and rate doctors.

Most of Revolution Health's offerings are free, but consumers also can pay for premium telephone services such as answers to health questions and help settling insurance claims. The company is talking with major employers about purchasing that service for employees, Case said.

He anticipates taking the company public in a "few years" but insists the company has a "long-term view" and expects it will take years to bring about major changes.