DotMed News
DotMed News is the news service operated by DOTmed.com, Inc., a New York-based online marketplace for new and used medical equipment. Published through the DOTmed website at dotmed.com, the service covers imaging, health care technology and the business of medical equipment for hospital, imaging centre and vendor readers. Its daily news product, HealthCare Business News, is written for the professionals responsible for purchasing, maintaining, repairing and managing the life cycle of medical equipment, and it sits alongside DOTmed's auctions, classified listings, equipment guides and service forums as the editorial arm of a long-established medical equipment trading community.
Overview
DotMed News, sometimes styled DOTmed News, reports on the medical equipment industry from the perspective of the people who buy, sell, service and use the machines. Typical coverage includes company and product announcements from imaging and health technology manufacturers, hospital technology investments, artificial intelligence tools for radiology and other departments, regulatory and legal developments affecting providers, and features and interviews with industry figures. Its Daily News pages group stories under headings such as Business Affairs, and its longer features include interview series and commentary collected under headings such as Voices, in which outside contributors discuss subjects ranging from contract management for accountable care organisations to data integration, regulation and generative artificial intelligence in health care.
The audience is deliberately practical. A story about a new imaging system matters to this readership not only as technology news but as a purchasing, maintenance and resale question. That orientation follows from DOTmed's position as a marketplace: the same registered users who read the news may be listing equipment, bidding at auction, sourcing parts or looking for a service technician.
The DOTmed marketplace
DOTmed was launched by Philip F. Jacobus, who remains its chief executive officer and founder and the publisher of HealthCare Business News. Jacobus has said he launched DOTmed.com in 1998, while company listings give a founding year of 1999, the period in which the site went live publicly. He brought long experience to the venture, having been involved in health care since 1977, when he visited China to sell equipment, and having done business in more than 35 countries. His wife Barbara helped him found DOTmed. The company is privately held and headquartered in New York, New York, with a workforce described in directory listings as between 11 and 50 employees.
The marketplace helps people buy, sell and auction new and used medical products online. Company descriptions have reported more than 23,000 visitors each weekday and over 380,000 registered users, figures that have grown from earlier published totals of about 210,000 registered users and more than 360,000 listings. Its online products include auction platforms, a WebStore, a Virtual Tradeshow, a Service Technicians Forum, a careers section and free classified listings, with equipment categories covering imaging, ultrasound, parts and services and hospital and surgical equipment. DOTmed describes itself as the world's largest and most experienced company focused on helping people buy, sell and auction new and used medical products online.
HealthCare Business News
The daily news service is branded HealthCare Business News. According to DOTmed's company description, it is read by health care industry professionals from hospitals, health care facilities and imaging centres who are responsible for the purchase, maintenance, repair and life cycle of medical equipment. Its editorial content focuses on new technologies, industry insight, innovation, news, trends and commentary from health care professionals across industry sectors, and it is emailed to more than 43,000 DOTmed registered users worldwide.
The news operation has also had a print and magazine dimension. DOTmed published DOTmed Business News as a monthly print publication delivered to senior health care executives, with a BPA-audited circulation of 31,000 reported in the early 2010s, and an iPad edition distributed through Apple's App Store. Monthly magazine features included industry sector reports and interviews with prominent figures in health care publishing and policy. The combination of a daily email and web news service with a monthly magazine allowed DOTmed to serve both the fast news cycle of equipment deals and product launches and the slower, feature-led discussion of where health care business was heading.
Editorial features and the Jacobus Report
One of the service's recognisable features is the Jacobus Report, a first-person feature in which Philip Jacobus recounts conversations with people across the health care industry and the lessons he draws from them. Jacobus has explained that he spends five to six hours a day visiting with people by telephone, in person or over video chat, and the feature turns those conversations into short narratives for readers. It gives the news service a personal voice unusual among marketplace publications and reflects the founder's long career of equipment dealing across many countries.
Other recurring editorial elements include interviews and profiles, industry sector reports tied to particular modalities or departments, and contributed commentary. The Voices section carries insights from executives and consultants on operational and technology questions, while news pages carry reported items on manufacturers such as GE HealthCare and Siemens Healthineers, on hospital system investments and expansions, and on legal and regulatory cases affecting imaging and other clinical services. This mixture of staff reporting, founder-led features and outside commentary is characteristic of trade publishing, where the readers are also the industry's participants.
Equipment guides and the Virtual Trade Show
DOTmed has extended its editorial role into reference publishing. In 2012 it introduced DOTmed New Equipment Guides in print and online, providing at-a-glance profiles of current models in specific modalities from major medical equipment manufacturers. The guides debuted in the May edition of DOTmed Business News and online in the company's Virtual Trade Show, an interactive environment listing thousands of makes and models. The first guides covered bone densitometers, breast imaging and ultrasound, with guides for PET, PET/CT, stress tests and SPECT scheduled the following month and three to four new guides per month planned on average. Each guide was tied to the Industry Sector Report published monthly in the magazine.
At the time, DOTmed's president said the guides would help those involved in the buying process narrow down decisions and determine the right equipment for their facility, and that providing manufacturer information was a natural progression for a company whose role as an information source had grown. Major manufacturers including GE Healthcare, Carestream Health and STERIS operated WebStores on the platform, with Siemens Healthcare and Philips Healthcare stores expected to open. The guides illustrate how DotMed News blurs the line between journalism and buyer's reference material, a deliberate feature of a news service owned by a marketplace.
Auctions, parts and services coverage
News coverage on DOTmed is closely connected to the economics of used equipment. Hospitals and imaging centres use the platform to dispose of idle assets and acquire parts that extend the life of valuable systems, and partnerships have formalised that activity. The American Medical Group Association partnered with DOTmed to assist its members in selling used medical equipment and idle assets, giving members access to DOTmed's dealer network and its supply of parts. Group purchasing organisations have similarly offered members access to DOTmed's auction processes; in one reported case, a Missouri regional health centre realised a net gain on the disposal of a used linear accelerator, replaced during a cancer centre expansion, through a streamlined auction process offered at a discounted commission rate.
These arrangements explain the subjects DotMed News treats as important. Equipment life cycle management, hospital liquidations, parts availability, service technician capacity and the resale value of imaging systems are not side topics for this readership; they are the financial background to clinical care. The Service Technicians Forum, where engineers discuss repair problems, complements the news service by capturing the practical knowledge of the people who keep equipment running.
Readership and industry position
DOTmed's readers include hospital executives, imaging centre managers, biomedical and clinical engineering staff, equipment dealers, brokers, service companies and manufacturers' representatives. Directory and company materials describe a global user base, with registered users worldwide receiving the daily news by email. Jacobus is a member of professional bodies including AHRA, AAMI and HFMA, and has contributed to a number of magazines and journals and addressed trade groups, reflecting the company's embedded position in the imaging and health care management associations whose members form its audience.
Within health care trade media, DotMed News occupies the equipment-centred niche. General hospital publications cover policy and finance across the whole institution, and radiology publications cover clinical practice; DOTmed concentrates on the machines, the markets for them and the businesses that trade and maintain them. Stories about artificial intelligence software, hospital construction or a manufacturer's leadership change appear through that lens, assessed for what they mean for capital equipment decisions.
How the service operates today
The DOTmed website continues to present Daily News alongside equipment listings, parts listings, service listings and company directories, with popular models and recent forum posts visible beside the headlines. A reader arriving for a news story about an acquisition or a new AI offering is one click from the marketplace where related equipment is bought and sold, and a seller listing a scanner is equally close to the news that may affect its value. That integration is the defining characteristic of the service and distinguishes it from stand-alone news agencies.
The founder's charitable and practical ethos is also part of the company's public identity. Jacobus is described in his own biographical notes as active in charity, helping rural clinics and trying to help DOTmed users when he can. Whether or not readers share that self-description, it signals the relationship the news service seeks with a community of comparatively small dealers, rural providers and independent service engineers alongside large hospitals and global manufacturers.
Significance
DotMed News is significant less for competing with general health care journalism than for documenting the commercial life of medical technology. Modern hospitals depend on imaging and treatment equipment whose purchase prices, maintenance costs and resale values shape budgets and access to care, especially for smaller and rural facilities that rely on the used equipment market. A news service created by, and for, that market records developments that other outlets overlook, from parts sourcing and equipment guides to the auction of a single linear accelerator.
Based in New York and operating since the late 1990s, DOTmed has outlasted many early online marketplaces by combining trading, community and publishing in one platform. DotMed News is the editorial expression of that model, and its daily HealthCare Business News remains a reference source for professionals who manage the medical equipment on which contemporary health care depends.
