Part 3 : Time Management

So if you had one piece of advice for a would-be webmaster, what would it be?

Have a vision - and work hard to make it come true. And never - NEVER - give up!

Your website is now a small part of the multi-million dollar online health industry. What are your views on the proliferation of online consumer health services? Are there any hidden dangers?

Wherever there is a new medium being explored, there is some danger. A lot depends on how careful users are. Medical history is strewn with stories of scams, of charlatans fooling gullible victims, or earth-shattering news stories that never panned out. The Internet is only another vehicle for such scams.

But this is not to say all such sites are worthless. Not at all. There are many valuable services that are doing a lot to promote health awareness and offer help on various health related issues. The turning point will come when all healthcare websites decide to get validated, authenticated, by an external unbiased authority. Today, there are several such organizations but their requirements aren't very stringent. Once health information is vetted by specialists and reputed individuals, public confidence in this industry will soar - as will profits.

How do you cope with the volume of email you must get as a medical webmaster?

I've learnt many tricks over time. On the server side, I use scripts to handle email generated from my online forms. An autoresponder sends out an acknowledgement of the message and directs the reader to an FAQ page for immediate answers. The information is stored in an online database on my website.

On the client side, my email program uses filters to sort incoming mail into different folders. Depending on priority, each folder is dealt with periodically. I also use cut-and-paste templates for the most often asked questions and to cover topics I answer frequently.

The challenge comes from responding quickly, relevantly, and avoiding the impersonal tone that a computer based response creates, while still managing to keep one's sanity :)

Talking of time management, you're a busy heart surgeon, and yet you still find time for your frequent wise and uplifting postings on web business matters - how do you manage?

Not easily! I've managed by mastering the trick of going with very little sleep - it's a professional requirement! :)

Seriously though, my online persona has been moulded to a great extent by my *real* life. You can't be online what you aren't in real life - unless you have a split personality :)

The uplifting and positive attitude of my posts - that you mention - come from watching my little patients recover from life-threatening heart defects.

And I think 'If THEY can bounce back, why can't WE ?!'

There's a perfect fit between my two groups of activities. Both let me HELP OTHERS. In the Operating Room it is one patient at a time. On the Web, it is hundreds or even thousands of people at once. This is what makes all the hard work and effort worthwhile.

Are there any particular problems with being located in India, where Internet infrastructure is not as well-developed as in, say, the USA?

Yes, there are. The major irritants are the slowness of data transfer which means wasted time waiting for pages to load, and the frequent loss of my dial up access to the Net. Also costs of access and telephone usage are pretty high. But things are rapidly changing, and within a year broadband access will be available here.