DOCTOR Adir Shiffman had to feign a ``sickie'' just to make himself available for our interview before Christmas. Such was last year's chaotic lifestyle for this medical practitioner-cum-Internet entrepreneur.

By his own estimates, Shiffman spent much of 2000 working 16-hour days, roughly dividing his time between hospital shifts and attending to his dot-com interests.

After graduating from Monash University in 1999, Shiffman worked through all of last year as an intern, on quarterly rotations. The first three months were passed in surgery at Mildura Base Hospital, followed by stints in general medicine at Monash Medical Centre and Sandringham Hospital and a final three months in the emergency ward and on nights at Dandenong Hospital.

Amid this, Shiffman was not only operating an Internet shopping mall business, but also embarked on a new venture evaluating online businesses.

It has had its moments, he admits. ``I would say it excites people, but I think it's a novelty for them,'' Shiffman says. ``People assume medical doctors are honest, intelligent, knowledgeable, level-headed; I've found it is incredibly advantageous in business.''

So how does a 26-year-old manage careers in medicine and business, particularly when it's in the most volatile area of the economy? Well, in the end, you can't. This year, Shiffman hangs up the stethoscope to focus on his business interests.

He says: ``I couldn't cope with another year in medicine''. But he hasn't reached this decision lightly, having juggled medicine and one communications-technology venture or other ever since he began his studies in 1993.

``Even today people ask me: `Are you taking a year off next year or are you quitting medicine?'

``I'm not making any firm plans. I'm taking a year at a time,'' he says.

Shiffman attributes his interest in medicine to a sense of altruism inculcated from a young age not only by his parents but by grandparents who lived through the Holocaust and appreciated the importance of social justice.

``If you had to go to work everyday, I thought, what better thing to do than try to make sick people better?'' he says. ``It's the great equaliser, isn't it? So I said one day I'll go and do medicine.''

It also was a reaction, he says, to his father, who studied medicine for a year and now works as an e-business consultant.

But there was always another side to Shiffman. An enterprising spirit and a fascination with the world of commerce can be traced back to his teens.

``When I was 15, I used to sit in the library whenever I had a free period and read the Australian Financial Review. My dream, when I was 16, was one day to be employed on the Financial Review. And to be a part of the wheels of the economy.''

But the wheels were already turning. At 13, he and a school mate (and a future business partner) at Caulfield Grammar, Michael Borsky, taught themselves to program text-based games. A couple of years on, Shiffman was buying and refurbishing fax machines at liquidation auctions of companies that had gone broke: ``I was buying these fax machines for $150, $200, polishing them up and selling them off for $600, even, $800. And I thought, jeez, there's a business in this. This hardware is going to take off.''

It didn't, but that spurred Shiffman to shift his focus to where the latest action was.

In 1994, Shiffman spent a year in his country of birth, Israel, a place he keeps close ties with today, not the least because it is one of the world's largest IT investment hubs.

When he returned to Australia the following year, he not only resumed his medical studies but set himself up to resell call-back services, a venture that sprang from wanting to keep in touch with a girlfriend overseas.

It was also Shiffman's first contact with the Internet. It wasn't long before Shiffman started to suss out both the longer term possibilities and opportunities of the Internet.

``I'm the sort of person that, if I see a good idea, I immediately try and think: is anyone going to be interested in buying this? And if they are, is there going to be a margin? And if there is, is there a business opportunity?''

It also doesn't hurt to be a bit of a showman, a description he openly countenances. He has the sharp patter and smooth tongue of the self-possessed marketer who craves notice.

Through the latter half of the 1990s, Shiffman was dipping his fingers in and out of a lot of Internet pies. There was the online mobile phone-reselling business, TalkTel Communications, Sharescentral, an information service about online brokers and a free Internet fax service, and Superfax, which was sold to US-based Fax4Free.com within two weeks of being set up.

The pair also experimented less successfully with selling perfume, travel products and watches online.

Most of these were run through a portal site, Supershop.com.au, which Shiffman established with Borsky. Shiffman by now was in his final year of medicine, while Borsky had completed a computer science degree and was studying law.

Shiffman acknowledges that although he had wanted to be part of the Internet, he wasn't certain how to convert his interest into a lasting, profitable venture. ``Supershop didn't make me rich,'' he says.

Perhaps reflecting this, Shiffman's business activity stepped up in 2000; he was involved with several other high-tech ventures, including a Web-development company Hybridmedia, eSIM.com.au, e-mail audit business ActiveNames and Web-solutions provider Headstart.

Then there were the two offers to buy Supershop, one from a small-cap IT company and another from - reportedly, but unconfirmed by Shiffman - mining company Min-Tech 8.

Shiffman recalls the day negotiations with the IT company, which he won't name, were held in Mildura. ``I insisted they fly me up to Mildura as well as bring my partner up. I think it was the highest level discussions that the Mildura Grand Hotel had ever had. It was absolutely hilarious.''

But Mildura was probably the toughest time for Shiffman. Not only was he tied up in surgery for long hours (unlike his other rotations, where he would use up to an hour of hospital time to make business calls), but he had to dial out through an operator, which made Internet use near impossible. ``My mobile phone bill was disastrous,'' he says. In the end, he would fly to Melbourne every available weekend and hold meetings in the airport lounge.

Unfortunately, both deals fell through. Shiffman is more regretful about the IT company, which he was much impressed by, but didn't offer enough of ``what we wanted''.

It was the same with the mining company, which wanted to retain the services of both Shiffman and Borsky but neither was interested in staying on. Shiffman didn't because, as he admits, he likes to be his own boss; Borsky because he was keen to move on to a job with consulting firm McKinsey's.

``I'm a big risk taker, I see a bigger picture,'' says Shiffman ``I don't mind things looking small today if they move towards a bigger picture.''

Perhaps the biggest risk of Shiffman's internship was deciding to set up an entirely new Web venture in October while still fully employed as a practising doctor.

Shiffman's decision finally to abandon medicine was made easier by someone whom he likes to call his ``angel investor''.

``My angel investor said he liked my ideas. But he advised me to produce one idea and run with that one idea. It was very good advice. I had to choose one thing and it had to be a killer thing. He wouldn't have back me if I had continued with medicine next year,'' Shiffman says.

That one big thing is Global Reviews, which Shiffman has co-founded with another colleague from school, Adam Goodvach.

Global Reviews is an online market research company that assesses the performance of e-tailers. Using some 300 criteria, the company has reviewed about 40 Australian e-tailers to date, but has plans to encompass 200 Australian and leading international Web businesses in its survey data. Information is updated monthly.

``You have to realise at the moment with e-commerce there is absolutely no information any deeper than hits. I put two and two together and said, if I can create an algorithm or a system and collect massive amounts of data on e-tail stores, create a simple version for consumers to know who they can buy from with confidence and package that data nicely, it will be very valuable,'' Shiffman says. ``No one is providing this level of data anywhere in the world.''

Shiffman has rented space in an old bank vault under a Collins Street office block. The Vault, as it is called, has been set up by the De Bono Institute, which aims to incubate small IT start-ups. Although Global Reviews is not being incubated, Shiffman approves of the model, well exploited by Israel, because it creates a symbiotic environment.

Though Global Reviews offers a simple review service for consumers, it's the research data for advertisers and agencies that is really valuable. Shiffman says he has already had interest from e-tailers, as well as ad agencies.

Shiffman says he plans to form an industry panel to review criteria. But to join the panel the company needs to be serious player in the industry and commit to purchase the Global Reviews product. A major e-tailer and consultancy have committed to the panel so far.

Concentrating on Global Reviews has meant putting many of his other projects to one side. This includes folding Supershop into Global Reviews.

With plans to open an office in Asia down the track, Shiffman expects Global Reviews to turn a profit by June or July. ``The ideal thing for Global Reviews, to be honest, is a trade sale down the track.''

Sydney Morning Herald/The Age IT News, 15 January 2001