Therapy in cyberspace

The last thing a busy executive needs is to be taken ill on a business trip. But, thanks to a Swiss company, international jet-setters can travel anywhere in the world, safe in the knowledge that professional medical help is just a phone call away.

McWellness is a Basel-based company which offers medical advice over the telephone, fax and Internet, to busy people who don’t have time to waste in doctors’ waiting rooms. McWellness’s doctors can also arrange consultations with physicians throughout the world at a moment’s notice.

Central to the McWellness ethos is that current medical services do not meet the needs of internationally mobile executives. “We’re trying to give people a doctor they can take along wherever they are and at any time,” says Dr Catharina Maulbecker Armstrong, founder of McWellness.

Barbara Staehelin and Maulbecker Armstrong, two jet-set executives, decided to found McWellness in 1997. Five doctors, based in Basel, are now on hand to answer members’ health-related questions round the clock.

Advice, rather than diagnoses are given. If the problem appears serious, McWellness’s doctors will arrange an appointment with one of 5,000 phyicians worldwide.

Dr Maulbecker Armstrong insists the service is preferable to seeking out a doctor for oneself. She points out that McWellness holds the complete medical records of all its members so “we know more about them than any individual doctor possibly could.”

So the next time you’re on business or holiday in Tokyo and have a tooth ache, there’s no need to waste time and effort trying to find a dentist who speaks English. Just drop a line to McWellness in Basel, and they’ll arrange everything right away.

All you need is access to a phone, fax or the internet, and, of course, an executive’s salary so you can afford McWellness’s SFr2,800 annual membership fee.

By Samantha Tonkin