Those of you who know me know that I have always taken an interest in charitable activities. When my friend Don Bogutski was the president of IAMERS and asked me to serve on the board, in addition to helping with membership I tried to establish a charitable committee. Even now, I make it a point to help charities whenever I can.

Almost everyone I know in our business is willing to help a charity, but it is difficult to know exactly what to do. Yet I think health care has a unique advantage over other industries, because it is possible for us to help in a very direct way: that is, by sending needed equipment from its current location to where it is most urgently needed with very little overhead or expense.

DOTmed is in a great position to help this process. With more than 20,000 people visiting our site every day and more than 250,000 listings, we can make it easy for charities to find the equipment they need.

And now, DOTmed has introduced an easy way for hospitals and health care providers to make equipment available for donation.

Over the years, I have learned that needy facilities typically need the most basic equipment. For instance, a resource-poor clinic in a developing country might require simple surgical instruments, operating room lights or a no-frills OB/GYN ultrasound -- not a high-end CT scanner or a mass spectrometer.

Unfortunately, since the most basic equipment tends not to be very valuable and has low margins, most traders and dealers do not bother buying it for resale. As a result, sometimes useful equipment is simply discarded or sold for a tiny fraction of its original cost.

As I travel and meet hospital executives, they are disappointed to see perfectly good equipment go to waste. They generally would prefer to find a useful home where it might save lives.

Many of you know that DOTmed has created a Private Sale format where hospitals can offer equipment to our Gold Service Dealers.

Now, this type of equipment for which there is low demand can be offered by hospitals to charities.

This is a free service that we are offering and I feel very, very good about it.

If you are a health care provider, please do not dispose of your equipment. Visit DOTmed and take advantage of our new Charity LifeLine.

Also, although we have signed up a number of charities, we are always looking for more.

Please tell any reputable charities you work with about our new feature, and ask them to visit www.dotmed.com/charity to find out how to sign up.