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ED BOND ONLINE
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Thursday, April 10, 1997
Valley Edition
Section: Metro
Page: B-3
Personal Best;
He's Helped Put Doctoring on the Internet;
By ED BOND
SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
The modem sings the distinctive tone that a connection
has been made as Dr.
Avrum Bluming stares into the screen of his Macintosh computer.
But then, nothing.
Somewhere, a step has been missed. The L.A. Free-Net is
up and working, but
at the moment its founder can't connect from his Encino office.
"I'm not a computer techie," Bluming said, "I'm a doctor."
Bluming, 57, is also the founder of the HOPE . Unit Foundation,
an
organization that supports cancer patients. A cancer researcher and
oncologist
who until 1993 served as chief of staff at what is now Encino/Tarzana
Regional
Medical Center, Bluming prefers that patients learn as much as they
can about
fighting disease.
"The idea of a doctor as parent is an old-fashioned idea,"
he said. "I
prefer to think of the doctor as an advisor."
In 1986, Bluming was intrigued by a story about a computer
message site in
Cleveland where ordinary people started posting medical questions to
doctors
who quickly and anonymously answered them. The Cleveland Free-Net,
the
nation's first such free computer-access program, quickly grew beyond
medicine
into other subjects.
The medical potential for a Free-Net impressed Bluming.
So, as he puts it,
for the next eight years whenever he or one of his fellow volunteers
saw an
acquaintance on the street, they asked them for donations.
With their help and a federal grant, the all-volunteer
L.A. Free-Net was
launched May 10, 1994. Based at Encino/Tarzana medical center, the
site has
local access numbers in all Los Angeles area codes, more than 250 phone
lines,
and handles 7,500 hits a day from students, seniors, the poor and
professionals.
In addition to access to vast resources of medical information,
including a
connection to a physicians' nationwide database, the L.A. Free-Net
also
connects users to libraries, colleges, community groups, charities,
the city
of Los Angeles and Caltrans. It is used by Emergency Network Los Angeles,
a
group of nonprofit groups that respond to disasters.
The Free-Net is not free, but the $15 annual fee, a fraction
of what
commercial Internet service providers charge, is sometimes waived for
those
who cannot afford it. The fee keeps the system from being flooded by
users,
Bluming said. "We didn't want to drown in success," he said.
"We see a large number of senior citizens," said Mel Roseman
of Encino, a
retired Birmingham High School English teacher and L.A. Free-Net volunteer.
Roseman, the Internet service coordinator and a general trouble-shooter,
knows
of many Free-Net users with outdated equipment.
"One user is still proudly using a Commodore 64, just
to show that it can
be done," Roseman said. "All you need is a computer with a serial output
and a
modem."
Schools can also get free Internet access through the
Free-Net. Nonprofits
can set up Web pages there and the Free-Net is working on a connection
to a
retirement home in Tarzana.
The Free-Net is not as impersonal as most of the Internet.
"We don't allow
handles," Bluming said, referring to the use of computer pseudonyms.
Whenever
e-mail or other postings are made through the L.A. Free-Net, "It's
your name
that goes on it," he said.
The Free-Net is about sharing ideas of building a community
rather than Web
surfing, game playing and chat. "We want to put a face on it," Bluming
said.
Free-Net Web page address is <a href="http://www.lafn.org/">http://www.lafn.org/</a><
Personal Best is a weekly profile of an ordinary person
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