For
the past thirty years since its inception, Wonca has seen growth in many areas.
But it was only in the past eight or so years that growth has been particularly
impressive especially in the areas of collaborative work with WHO, in the amount
of activity within the five regions of Wonca and within the various Standing
Committees and Working Parties like the Wonca International Classification Committee,
Research Committee and Rural Practice Working Party.
These
impressive growths and spurts of activities over the past eight years would
not have been possible if Wonca had not had the help of sponsorships from two
generous friends in the pharmaceutical industry. From 1993 onwards, Glaxo was
responsible for the sponsorship of the initial six issues of The Family Doctor
Newsmagazine over three years, with Pharmacia-Upjohn taking up the sponsorship
for the ten issues since 1996. The sponsorship monies over these years were
sufficient to cover the costs of production, printing, and distribution of 130,000
copies of The Family Doctor worldwide, with sufficient funds leftover to help
finance the increased tempo of activities of Wonca within the various Regions
and the Standing Committees/ Working Parties. Like they always say, all good
things must come to an end; and so also the sponsorship Wonca had enjoyed all
these years. Pharmacia has officially informed us that its sponsorship of The
Family Doctor would end with the 16th issue this September. It is proper that
Wonca should now place on record its appreciation to Glaxo and Pharmacia-Upjohn
for their contributions.
With
the foreknowledge that the sponsorship was ending in 2001, Dr Goran Sjonell
the then Immediate Past President of Wonca, visited Singapore in early 1999
on his way to the Wonca Executive Meeting in Hong Kong. Goran was the one in
Wonca who was responsible for securing the sponsorships from the two pharmaceutical
giants. I was responsible for the printing, processing and mailing of the 130,000
copies from Singapore. Over a seafood dinner, we discussed the impact this ending
of sponsorship would have on Wonca and explored possible avenues available to
ensure a steady source of income for Wonca. At the end of a three-hour dinner,
it was decided that a proposal to expand the existing Wonca Website ( www.wonca.org)
into a commercially viable entity, be put to the Executive in Hong Kong.
Wonca
Executive took up the idea in Hong Kong and refined it. Goran was tasked to
head an Ad-hoc Task Force to explore the idea further and make recommendations
to Executive. Two meetings of the Task Force took place in 2000 and a ‘Request
for Proposal’ to re-develop Wonca’s website was formulated.. By the time of
the 16th Wonca World Conference in Durban, South Africa, Executive
was ready to select the web-provider after a call for bids worldwide. After
a careful and very transparent process of short-listing conducted by the CEO
at that time, Professor Wes Fabb, Executive invited two bidders to present their
packages. At the end of the long process, medi+World International of Melbourne,
Australia was selected. Medi+World
is a well regarded company specializing in CD-Rom based CME programmes and medical
educational software and had in its submission undertaken to work with NEC Australia
for the hardware and technical aspects of the web. To help medi+World in the
development of the website, Wonca set up a Task Force on Website Development
chaired by Executive Member at Large, Dr Geoff Martin. The Task Force consists
of two Subgroups with Professor Michael Kidd heading the Technical Development
Subgroup, and Dr Barbara Booth heading the Editorial Subgroup. With their subgroup
members, these two leaders are now working very hard to ensure a user friendly,
relevant, current, and increasingly popular website for Wonca.
Over
time, the Wonca Website will provide extensive amounts of information and services
to all its users and there are moves to ensure secure on-line commercial transactions
with the use of major credit cards via the web. Several layers of access, based
on the status of the web user, will be in place to ensure security of information
and transactions. Parts of the Wonca Web will have the following:
About Wonca :
On Membership & Services:
On CME :
Conferences and Publications:
Collaborative
Relations with Wonca
These
are only a few of the features that would be available on the Wonca Web. There
are plans to extend the range of services and information even more extensively
and comprehensively. Our present smaller web now being hosted and managed by
the Sowerby Centre for Health Informatics at Newcastle (SCHIN) at the University
of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the United Kingdom will shortly be incorporated into
the larger and new-look Wonca Web. We would like to take this opportunity to
very sincerely express our thanks and appreciation to SCHIN for their contributions
towards maintaining and hosting our web for the past several years.
As
an organization, and in all the 30 years of its existence, Wonca has never committed
such an extensive amount of manpower and money to a single project as it has
done in the development of this worldwide Wonca Web. Most of the planning and
initial development of the web will be completed soon.
BUT THIS IS ONLY THE START. WHAT
HAPPENS NOW TO THE NEW WONCA WEB WILL DEPEND ENTIRELY ON THE SUPPORT WONCA MEMBER
ORGANISATIONS AND MEMBERS GIVE TO THE WEB.
Everyone
knows that the only way to keep the Web going and to have it contribute to the
financial health of Wonca as an organization, is to ensure that the it remains
financially viable and commercially attractive for large business corporations
and businesses to sponsor and advertise on the Wonca Web. These would of course
have to comply with the principles and guidelines on sponsorship and advertising
set by Wonca. For this to happen, the Web must first demonstrate that it enjoys
sufficiently large numbers of “hits”
or visits in order that sponsors and advertisers feel that they have a sufficient
degree of exposure for the money they spend.
Wonca
has approximately 150,000 or more member-GPs/FPs among its full member and associate
member organizations if the circulation numbers of The Family Doctor is anything
to go by. If we assume that only 33% of these 150,000 members hit the Website
twice a week, then there would be (50,000 x 2 x 4) = 400,000 hits on the Web
a month!! This number, although
not really very large, would be a good start and could be attractive enough
initially to draw in interested sponsors and advertisers. This is what I meant
when I stated earlier that the Wonca Web would need the full support of its
members and member organizations if it is to survive and be commercially attractive.
Let us, as members of this world organization, decide to help ourselves and
make the Web and the organization as a whole financially self-reliant. The decision
is ours to make.
Dr
Alfred W T Loh
Chief Executive Officer, WONCA
Editor’s note:
Check out the new WONCA Website at www.GlobalFamilyDoctor.com
The Wonca Website Development Task Force at its first meeting in
Melbourne, Australia:
Standing left to right:
Professor Wes
Fabb, Wonca
Webmaster;
Associate Professor Teng Liaw, Member
, Web Technical Development Subgroup;
Dr Geoff Martin Chair, Wonca Website Development Task Force; Dr Alfred Loh CEO
, Wonca
Seated
left to right:
Dr Barbara Booth Chair, Web Accreditation Subgroup;
Dr
Michael Kidd Chair, Web Technical Development Subgroup;
Ms Lesley Pocock MD, medi+World International