The family scrambled to find the services needed in their home state of Virginia to take care of their 80-year-old mother, until they "realized she was not going to come home," Mr. Moore says. She was placed in a convalescent home.

Mr. Moore, a successful independent consultant, was stumped. Not long after his mom's fall, he began mulling over a dot-com business plan to help folks like himself cope with such life-changing events. In June his idea for a Web site to help family members locate the appropriate local health-care agencies, order prescription refills, and learn more about a loved one's condition will come to fruition under the name Familycare America.

"All this information is here," says Mr. Moore, president and CEO of Familycare America. "Instead of sitting with your head in your hands saying 'what am I going to do?'"

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Familycare America officials say family members are the majority of caregivers in the United States, with an estimated 25 million family caregivers, according to the National Family Caregivers Association, a nonprofit organization. Family caregivers range from those who must live with a relative and provide 24-hour care to those who help a few hours a week.

"Anybody involved in a caregiver situation knows it's incredibly frustrating to figure out what to do with someone who needs long-term care," says Jim Emerman, associate executive director at the nonprofit American Society on Aging. "There's no central place for information about this."

A handful of Web sites address general healthcare services, including Drkoop.com and Healtheon/WebMD.

Now a growing number of venture-backed sites target specific markets within the health-care industry, such as caregiving. Caregiver sites include CaregiverZone, Careguide, Getcare.com, and Web of Care.com.

Sites like these propose to become an extension of a hospital discharge planner, which recommends local caregiver resources to a family when a relative is released. However, caregiver sites contend that the Web can improve remote care -- performed by 8 million Americans -- by presenting health-care services information in locales across the country in an easy-to-find manner.

BUILD TO SUIT

Mr. Moore provided Familycare America's $1.3 million in seed money in January, and the company is now pursuing a first round of funding in the range of $10 to $20 million. Familycare America will let caregivers create personal profiles of their relatives with Web links to appropriate support agencies and information on pertinent medicine and treatments. The company also can send them services and product information related to particular health conditions. It plans to make money through ads on its site, medicine sales, and sales referrals, says Mr. Moore.

CaregiverZone closed a $4 million first round of funding in January and hopes to close a second round of $8 to $12 million by May. The site, launched last December, has legal, nutritional, fitness, and finance information as well as ideas for short- and long-term housing solutions. CaregiverZone claims to have the largest online database of resources for care for the elderly. It plans to launch a caregiver store through partnerships with some "well-known" online drug and health food stores, says Izhar Matzkevich, the company's CEO.

Some large online drug, health, and medical supply stores are Drugstore.com, PlanetRx.com, and Medibuy.com.

Sites such as Familycare America and CaregiverZone will generate revenues through deals with pharmaceutical companies, says Mark Anderson, head of the worldwide healthcare division for META Group, a market research firm. Medicine refills make for some revenue, but the big bucks will come from sponsorships given by pharmaceutical companies to healthcare sites, which can reach millions of dollars a year, in addition to per-customer referral fees, he says.

"Pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money off those refills," Mr. Anderson says. "They want you to take your medicine on a regular basis."

Like any Internet business, caregiver Web sites must build a substantial user base. They also need to be heard above the advertising noise made by Healtheon/WebMD and other general healthcare sites. There are about 15,000 medical sites on the Web, simultaneously providing an abundance of information and creating confusion among caregivers, says Mr. Moore of Familycare America. "That's both the opportunity and the problem."

Discuss startup companies and venture capital in the Rising Startups discussion in our Private Companies discussion forum. Or visit the forums home page.