About Us

What is the Virtual Medical Centre (VMC)?
VMC ethos
Information on our site
Medical Directors and Editorial Advisory Board
Membership
Funding
Editorial quality assurance
Advertising
Accreditations
Affiliations
Awards
History of Virtual Medical Centre
Partners
Queries, Questions and Corrections

What is the Virtual Medical Centre (VMC)?

Virtual Medical Centre is Australia's leading medical information website. It delivers the latest medical information written by medical professionals.

VMC ethos

VMC aims to provide information on current conventional medicine. Information is designed to support that provided by your health professional and never to replace it.

Information on our site

The Medical Centre websites consists of 21 medical information centres on topics ranging from Allergy to Pain to Women's Health, each with medical information on:

Medical Directors and Editorial Advisory Board

Each centre has a Medical Director who works on ensuring the quality of medical information on the site is maintained and continually enhanced. The Medical Director is also assisted by an Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) of medical specialists.

The EAB is a group of medical specialists who have formed together in their particular area of medical expertise to contribute comments and feedback on the information that is displayed on the relevant centre. The Virtual Medical Centre's EAB consists of over 1,000 medical professionals.


	Dr Andrew Dean Oncologist MBChB MRCP (UK) Virtual Cancer Centre		Prof Graeme Hankey Neurologist MBBS MD FRCP (Edin) FRCP (Lond) Virtual Neuro Centre


	Dr Roger Goucke Pain Physician MBChB DTM&GH MRCGP FRAZCA Virtual Pain Centre		Dr Brendan McQuillan Cardiologist MBBS PhD FRACP Virtual Cardiac Centre


	Prof Jeffrey Hamdorf General Surgeon MBBS PhD FRACS Virtual Weightloss Centre		Dr Andrew McQuillan Haematologist MBBS FRACP FRCPA Virtual Blood Centre


	Dr Clay Golledge Microbiologist FRCPA FACTM DTM&H Virtual Infection Centre		Dr Donald Ormonde Gastroenterologist MBBS PhD FRACP Virtual Gastro Centre


	Dr Nick De Felice Psychiatrist MBBS FRANZCP Virtual Psych Centre		Dr Peter Bremner Respiratory Physician FRACP MD MBChB FACCP Virtual Respiratory Centre


	Dr Paul Snelling Nephrologist FRACP MBBS Virtual Renal Centre		A/Prof Rob Will Rheumatologist BSc(Hons) MBBS FRACP Virtual Rheum /Bone Centre


	Dr Garry Wilson General Practitioner MBBS General Practitioner Board		Dr Steve Wilson General Practitioner MBBS General Practitioner Board

Membership

There are two levels of information on Virtual Medical Centre - one aimed at health professionals and one aimed at patients and their families. Membership to VMC is available to everyone and is completely free. Health professionals can access more detailed sensitive information and can complete continuing medical education requirements when logged in. When logged in patients can elect to receive the enewsletters and participate in the site blogs and forums. Sign up now!

The information provided on Virtual Medical Centre is designed to complement, not replace, the relationship between a patient and his/her own physician.

Funding

Virtual Medical Centre gratefully acknowledges support from the pharmaceutical industry. For a list of all our sponsors please click on the link here.

Editorial quality assurance

The final decision of editorial content in a disease centre is made by the Medical Director responsible for that area. The Medical Director's information is published on the About Us page of each individual disease website. If a particular website does not have a Medical Director, then Dr Andrew Dean, Group Medical Director makes the final editorial decisions.

Each Medical Director has recruited a board of medical specialists in their particular disease area who they consult with regularly regarding medical editorial content on the websites. This keeps medical information credible and eliminates any conflict of interest issues that may arise due to sponsorship funding.

Advertising

To find out about VMC's advertising policies, please view our advertising policy page.

To find out about advertising opportunities, please view our advertise with us page.

Accreditations

		Virtual Medical Centre is accredited by the Geneva Switzerland HON International Ethics Code delivering our organisation the highest level of transparency and ethical standards available on the internet today.

		Virtual Medical Centre is a HealthInsite Information Partner. HealthInsite is an Australian gateway site, linking to a wide range of up-to-date and quality assessed information on important health topics.

Affiliations

Virtual Medical Centre and its employees support the Folding@home distributed computing project initiated by the Pande lab at Stanford University. We run their software which contributes to their goal of understanding protein folding, misfolding and related diseases. For more information, see http://folding.stanford.edu.

Awards

		Virtual Medical Centre received the No. 1 Website in the Hitwise Top 10 Website Award in recognition of outstanding performance. Hitwise is the industry standard which measures popularity according to the market share of user visits a website receives compared to other websites in their industry.

		Online Winner in the 18th WAITTA AWARDS 2008. The WAITTA awards recognise outstanding performance and contributions by members of the IT and technology community in Western Australia.

		National Library of Australia 2008. PANDORA (Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia) is an archive of Australian online publications that the National Library of Australia considers are of significance and have long-term research value. Virtual Medical Centre has been selected for the integrity of its medical content, to demonstrate what a credible online medicine website was like to future generations.

		Finalist in the Secrets of Australian IT Innovation Awards 2005. www.virtualnursingeducation.com provides professional development for nurses. Virtual Nursing Education has become a finalist in the Austrade Secrets of IT Innovation 2005.

		Finalist in the Secrets of Australian IT Innovation Awards 2004. My Quest (Online Medical Health Records) has become a finalist in the Austrade Secrets of IT Innovation 2004

		Winner of the Prime Minister's Award for Excellence in Community Business Partnerships for Western Australia 2004. Australian State and Territory Award Winner. Australian Prime Minister's awards for excellence in community business partnerships 2004.

History of Virtual Medical Centre

Wayne Hughes Dr Andrew Dean, Senior Palliative Care Specialist in WA discovered his patients had a real need for information on cancer. At times of great stress when people have been devastated by bad news of cancer or a life threatening disease, information retention is at its poorest. Often the patient will walk out of the doctor's room feeling confused and uninformed.

Dr Dean decided to create an intranet site about cancer at his hospital for patients to use. He soon had people from other hospitals asking him for access to the information.

That's when Dr Dean decided to team up with Pearl Farmer and International Businessman Mr Wayne Hughes to make the information on cancer available to everyone on the World Wide Web and www.virtualcancercentre.com was born.

Virtual Cancer Centre.com went live in August 2001 and got 20,000 hits in the first month. Specialists from other medical areas asked for an equivalent information resource in their areas of expertise. The Virtual Cancer Centre evolved into Virtual Medical Centre. There are currently 21 disease areas getting an average of almost 90 million hits per month.

Partners

Below are all the partners who have contributed to the success of the Virtual Medical Centre since commencement:

Major Partners

VMC has entered into a partnership with Australia's biggest ISP provider BigPond. The aim is to enable more Australians access to Virtual Medical Centre's credible medical information. BigPond content and entertainment is available unmetered for most broadband customers and free to browse for Telstra Next G mobile phones meaning BigPond customers can now download content and videos from Virtual Medical Centre for free!