[London, ENGLAND] DrGlobe.com, the Swiss-based provider of online "Health Account" services for doctors, announced Tuesday a secure messaging service for doctor-patient communications.

The new service will allow doctors and patients to correspond via a secure, confidential and central messaging system. Because it also has tracking facilities, DrGlobe.com says it is also "a new source for doctors to consult their patients online."

Ali Kursun, co-founder of DrGlobe.com, said that doctors are looking for time-saving, cost effective and secure online tools to improve communication with their patients and yet ensure revenues from the process. The DrGlobe.com messaging service, he said, provides exactly that.

"Our new online consulting tool makes doctor-patient communication efficient and more productive. Doctors can quickly reduce the time they spend on non-urgent inquiries and also generate revenues by using our online messaging service," said Kursun.

DrGlobe.com's messaging service keeps track of the online correspondence and enables doctors to set their own pricing scheme for each message. As a result, doctors derive revenue from the service -- and will have a greater incentive to use it.

With the huge numbers of people who travel away from home yet prefer to consult their own doctor at all times, the service will be invaluable. It offers features such as "waiting for reply listing" and "notification alerts" -- and has been implemented as additional to DrGlobe.com's trademarked Health Account service.

Health Account is the fundamental idea on which DrGlobe.com has been built. It is the place where individuals keep their personal health information -- hence no more "lost patient records" or difficulties in retrieving the information when the patient is overseas.

As well as the Health Account and its new messaging service, DrGlobe.com says it is developing a full range of online services for doctors and their patients in Europe.