Hey Salu, where are you?
In rifling through my paper files (hey, I’m a journalist, not a doctor, and I don’t type quickly enough to take my notes on the computer), I came across a company called Salu, a physician specialty hub from early this decade. The company, at one point headed by Jim Steeb, hosted sites called Dermdex for dermatologists and plastic surgeons, and NeuroHub for neurologists.
I have a report that said in January 2002, the company built research panels from among the various sites’ membership to study physician attitudes. My undated notes from a phone interview with Steeb said that Salu also offered secure online messaging, Web sites for practices within each hub’s specialty and a prescription writer that worked on either PocketPC (now Windows Mobile) or Palm platforms. (It was not true e-prescribing because back in the pre-RxHub and SureScripts era, it didn’t transmit information to pharmacies.
Also, from what I could gather from searching the Internet, Salu had partnerships with Healthwise, Payerpath (now part of Misys Healthcare Systems) and a few others.
But what ever happened to Salu and its brands? If the company went out of business, did someone else take over the sites? I found no sign that either Dermdex or NeuroHub was still active. Help, please!
Salu is alive and doing well as http://www.skinstore.comWhen the OIG issued warnings to pharmaceutical companies regarding giving away products and services (even if through thrid parties) to physicians in return for prescriptions in April 2003 we immediately experienced a decline in sales of our network services to Pharmaceutical companies which funded our NeuroHub and Dermdex medical specialty hubs. Fortunately we were experiencing excellent growth in our e-commerce platform selling cosmeceutical products directly to consumers. At the end of 2003 we made a strategic decision to exit the pharmaceutical model supporting the physician websites, email etc. to concentrate 100% of our efforts on SkinStore.com We partnered with a couple of players in the market to take over the physician websites and transition services. SkinStore is now one of the largest retailers of cosmeceutical skin care products experiencing 60% growth year over year.Jim Steeb,President and CEOSalu, Inc. dba SkinStore.com