Operating Since 2001

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—The home page of KwikMed.com's Web site looks like a run-of-the-mill source of sexual-stimulant pills, complete with a picture of a couple being playful in bed and a banner declaring: "Viagra as low as $6 per dose."
 

But from his headquarters in a low-slung office park here, KwikMed Chief Executive Peter Ax is waging a lonely campaign to win respect for his business.
 

Despite opposition from the medical establishment, pharmaceutical companies and many state and federal lawmakers, Mr. Ax is hoping to convince critics that his business of prescribing and selling drugs online is not only lawful, but also an important medical service.
 

"This is the future of medicine," says Mr. Ax, a 45-year-old venture capitalist. He says he has invested millions in KwikMed, which deals in "lifestyle drugs" such as impotence treatments Viagra and Cialis and hair-loss remedy Propecia.
 

KwikMed has won permission from the state of Utah to operate legally as long as it adheres to a strict set of guidelines. That makes it the only online prescription Web site in the U.S. that has won explicit approval from a state, according to the Federation of State Medical Boards.
 

Even so, KwikMed is facing an avalanche of opposition. The FSMB has asked Utah to reconsider its approval of KwikMed. Viagra manufacturer Pfizer Inc. has lobbied the Utah state legislature to crack down on KwikMed. A number of lawmakers on Capitol Hill are proposing federal legislation that would target online pharmacies. And dozens of states have revoked or suspended the licenses of doctors and pharmacists who work with Web pharmacy sites.
 

With such forces arrayed against it, KwikMed's efforts to legitimize its business—and online prescriptions in general—may seem quixotic. Mr. Ax's efforts, in the short term, are hurting his business as less scrupulous competitors undercut him. Already, many other pill-dispensing Web sites have gone under, gone underground or moved overseas. "Everyone who is serious about doing it the right way is either considering selling or changing their business model," says Tania Malik, former chief executive of VirtualMedicalGroup.com, another such site.
 

But KwikMed's efforts as an early pioneer in the field raise the larger question of whether online prescription services have a legitimate role in the medical community in the future. Many medical professionals believe that the Internet will eventually be a powerful tool for doctors and patients. But in a field where most doctors still keep paper files, it's too early to say how e-prescriptions will evolve.
 

While many people use Web pharmacies like drugstore.com to fill prescriptions they get from their doctor, KwikMed goes a step further by not only selling drugs, but also arranging for patients to obtain a prescription from a doctor through an online consultation. The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy says companies that do so are "rogue" sites. But KwikMed says what sets it apart is that it does more than simply provide a perfunctory consultation with a doctor: Its physicians review an extensive online medical questionnaire that patients fill out.
 

Each potential customer must fill out a 20-minute survey before KwikMed's doctors will write a prescription. Although many other Web sites have questionnaires, KwikMed convinced regulators that its form was more comprehensive than even the medical histories taken during a visit to a doctor's office.

From the November 16, 2004 issue