.med launches: Healthcare industry gets its own top-level domain
On Sept 2, the .med domain launches to bring more digital orientation to healthcare. The launch was complex and had been delayed.
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On September 2, the world of top-level domains (TLDs), which has been growing for years, will be enriched by another facet: from Tuesday, the domain extension .med will be generally available. It is basically intended for the healthcare sector and is intended to enable medical professionals such as doctors, clinics, research institutions, pharmaceutical companies and digital healthcare providers to secure their own meaningful Internet address.
Advocates of the new namespace emphasized that it could create more trust and clarity: From self-diagnosis apps and alternative treatment methods to "TikTok medicine", the amount of medical-looking content online is growing rapidly. It is often not clear to users who is behind the content. The .med extension should therefore serve as a visible sign of serious medical content. It helps patients and partners to immediately recognize professional providers and distinguish them from dubious information.
The new TLD should also contribute to improved communication in the healthcare system: a clear digital identity is particularly useful, argue the proponents, as many suitable domain names with endings such as .de or .com are already taken. A dedicated .med domain could not only be used for websites, but also for professional email addresses. This would standardize the exchange within the industry.
"Culture war" over the .med registration
The introduction of .med has dragged on. The main reason for the delays is the careful examination that the central domain administration ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) provides for "sensitive" TLDs. The term "med" is strongly associated internationally with healthcare and medicine. There are therefore concerns that a free, unregulated allocation of the domain could lead to abuse. There was a veritable "culture war" over whether such a sensitive term should be sold as a commodity to anyone. And the Mediterranean countries would also originally have liked to have .med.
The Cleveland-based US company Medistry won the race as the superordinate administrator (registry). To launch the domain, it had to adapt its business strategy. Initially, the allocation was to take place via a "Request for Proposal" procedure, which would have been restrictive. Only the decision to open up .med to a broader group of people accelerated the process. However, the resulting liberalization also had to be combined with certain protective measures to safeguard trademark rights in particular.
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Prices: Premium
In principle, .med is now open to all interested parties. However, the main target group remains healthcare professionals. The TLD is available from numerous registries worldwide. Registrars include Variomedia, Domainregistry.de, INWX, GoDaddy and Tucows. Medistry speaks of a premium domain for which there is great interest: By mid-August, there had been over 42,000 registrations during the first 12 weeks of the pre-registration phase. Major medical organizations and brands such as Biogen, CVS, Stanford, Bayer, Mayo Clinic and Ozempic have already registered.
Christian Dallmayer, head of the Starnberg-based registrar united-domains, told heise online that the price for new registrations is 79 euros for the first year and 279 euros for each additional year in the extension. Pre-registrants have until September 11 to register their domain. For comparison: The similar TLD .healthcare is advertised at 84 euros per year. Availability and costs vary with other providers.
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