Fast Lane Ventures launches VITAPORTAL following succesful trial
4 August, 2011. Fast Lane Ventures has today officially launched VitaPortal – a new website offering comprehensive and reliable information on medicine and health to all Russian Internet users.
The key advantage of VitaPortal is the reliability, accessibility and authenticity of the information available as every portal material published on the website is thoroughly reviewed by a specialty care provider or medical institution.
So far, the portal has been visited by more than 10,000 unique visitors per day to experience the user-friendly site structure which allows access to important health information quickly and conveniently.
VitaPortal CEO, Azamat Ulbashev, said that the website’s objective was to make sure that all the citizens of Russia are provided with up-to-date information to improve their own health and health of their near and dear.
“With just a few clicks of the mouse, our portal can help every citizen of Russia get efficient recommendations on how to act in any situation related to health issues. During a short test period, our portal was visited by more than 400 thousand people, and by the end of 2011, this figure will be 3.5 million users,” he said.
“By 2013, we are aiming to become the number one portal in the category Health and Medicine in Russia.”
VitaPortal publishes approximately 50 new articles on various medical topics daily to help provide a convenient solution and meet the basic health information needs of a growing Internet audience.
The key advantage for users is that the entire selection of information is provided within the framework of a single site which reduces time spent searching. Some of VitaPortal’s features include:
• Formularies of diseases, drugs, addresses of medical institutions, pharmacies;
• Popular articles on medical topics of current interest;
• Special services making it possible to quickly find answers to questions of interest;
• Communities making it possible to directly ask a question to a specialist in more than 40 areas of medicine;
• Visual images facilitating perception of complex medical information by the users;
• Interviews with key figures of Russian medicine and the leading scientific institutions in Russia; and
• News on developments in Russian and global medicine through a partnership with Yandex.
Through a strategic relationship with the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation, Vita Portal supports information cooperation and has other partnerships with major medical research centers and community organizations.
VitaPortal is a new company of Fast Lane Ventures Group, focused on creating innovative Internet businesses. Like other startups launched by Fast Lane Ventures, VitaPortal is based on the proven international model – in this case, the United States based website WebMD.com.
Expert member of the Commission on Health of the Public Chamber of Russia, Mr Alexander Lebedev PhD, said he believed that VitaPortal, as a new socially-oriented company, would have a promising future in Russia.
“Due to a number of demographic processes in Russia, quality health information becomes a product of extremely high demand. As the number of elderly people increases, the problem of maintaining health is becoming increasingly important. This is accompanied by increase in birthrates, which will attract hundreds of thousands of young mothers to the site,” he said.
“Application of a proven business model together with these objective tendencies and highly professional team of the company are the necessary and sufficient factors of its success. Fast Lane Ventures chose the best professionals, aspiring to create a world-class business in Russia.”
In the near future, the portal will have a video section, the range of special services will be greatly expanded, and a special website for doctors will be launched.
Total amount of seed investments is more than $1 mln.