The Spanish-language health monthly magazine Medico de Familia has launched Medicodefamilia.org, an ad-supported digital magazine for the Hispanic community. The new site combines content from the magazine with more frequently updated breaking healthcare news. Other features being developed include physician blogs, live Q&A chat with doctors, and an e-newsletter.

Full Article from HispanicPRWire.com

Soon after the launch of Revolution Health, WebMD has announced a host of new online services, including free personal health records, new Community Centers which enable the sharing of information, 60 new health centers, and an expanded video library. The company expects the enhancements to boost both traffic and advertising offerings.

Full Article from Health Data Management

Revolution Health has launched its Preview Site. Much more than a repository for health information, the site calls itself 'your health homepage', focusing on overall prevention and wellness, and offering highly interactive features such as community support tools, ratings and reviews on doctors and hospitals, and a membership which allows access to a live person to help you with anything from health issues to insurance problems.

Acknowledging the role women play as the family health manager, as well as their increasing use of the web as a central support tool, iVillage has launched iVillage Total Health. Leveraging new health resources acquired in the last year (Healthology and HealthCentersOnline), as well as new partnerships (GE Healthcare and NBC Universal), the site is said to now offer one of the largest health video libraries online, as well as expanded health content, news, tools, and community features. It will be interesting to see how iVillage refines its packages for advertisers over time, given its access to expanded venues and platforms, as well as increased reach. It is evident in any case, that this property is gaining dominance in the online healthcare arena.

Pharmaceutical companies are beginning to allocate more of their budget to online. Last year, pharma online allocations increased from 4% to 6%.

Full Article from eMarketer

Pfizer will be among the first clients to test out Carat Interactive's new blog marketing service. It will be interesting to see if this takes hold, given the general blog environment of uncontrolled content and aversion to blatant product marketing.

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The steady growth of online CME usage poses a prime opportunity for commercial sponsors to move advertising budgets online for 2005.

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Online pharma marketers should take a study just released by AtlasDMT shows that ad viewers are most likely to convert the first time they see an online ad. This finding suggests that CPM advertisers should put frequency caps in place when the goal is to drive an immediate conversion. Otherwise, ad impressions may get wasted on users who have already seen too many.