The appointment-booking tool is quietly ushering the technophobic medical profession into the digital era.

By Alex Konrad, reporter

FORTUNE — Physicians love gadgets and technology as much as anyone, but you’d never know it from the way many of them manage their medical practices. Shelves groan with patient files. Plenty of doctors still write out prescriptions. And patients can spend an eternity on hold waiting to book appointments by phone.

ZocDoc, a four-year-old tech company, is solving one of those problems. Its website and mobile apps allow patients to search for doctors by specialty and other categories, read reviews, and schedule visits electronically. (Think OpenTable, the popular restaurant reservation site, only for health care.) Consumers like the convenience of the service — the company says it has some 700,000 monthly users. But it turns out that some of ZocDoc’s biggest fans are doctors and hospitals, which use the service not only to win new patients but to help their offices manage appointments and reduce patient paperwork.

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Doctors pay ZocDoc a monthly subscription fee of $250 to enable would-be patients to book online or via the app. ZocDoc’s software integrates with existing appointment software used by hospitals and some private practices, instantly updating those schedules when a consumer makes a change on ZocDoc. Those without compatible appointment systems get access to ZocDoc’s web-based calendar software, which helps them manage all their appointments, including those made in person or on the phone.

For Tom Poole, a vice president at Beth Israel Medical Group in New York City, ZocDoc helps reduce costly no-shows because patients can cancel a visit with the click of a mouse or a tap on a screen. He adds, “When patients have to call, very often they get frustrated.”

New York-based ZocDoc, which now operates in 11 cities in the U.S., has raised more than $95 million in funding from Goldman Sachs (GS), Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies, and others. ZocDoc’s backers think the service could eventually offer other digital services to its growing network of physicians; the site already asks consumers to provide basic personal data, but ZocDoc could eventually capture and store enough data to allow patients to admit themselves into a hospital or doctor’s office with the swipe of a cellphone.

For now, though, company founders Cyrus Massoumi and Dr. Oliver Kharraz say they are focused on adding new cities (three more are in the pipeline) and signing up more doctors and hospitals. In the process, they’re helping, in a small way, to digitize the medical profession — one waiting room at a time.

This article is from the November 7, 2011 issue of Fortune.

Filed under: Contributors

Treasury officials considered shutting down GM’s also-ran luxury brand in 2009. Now, the decision not to is looking brilliant.

By Doron Levin, contributor

FORTUNE — U.S. Treasury officials weren’t sure in 2009 whether General Motors ought to shut down its Buick division as part of the government-sponsored bankruptcy. Their decision to hang on to the brand is looking better by the day.

Buick (GM) sales in the U.S. soared 48% in 2010 from 2009 on the strength of the fullsize LaCrosse sedan and Enclave crossover and another 24% this year following the successful introduction of the smaller Regal sedan.

The latest entry, dubbed Verano, will be arriving shortly to Buick’s 2,100 dealers and it looks like a strong contender as well. The Verano intends to compete among higher-end compacts; it features the same architecture as the Chevrolet Cruze and Opel Astra, with lots of tweaks, rakish lines, high-fashion touches and advanced engineering to give it a more luxurious feel.

GM, with its Buick brand, is turning the tables on more prestigious brands such as Toyota’s (TM) Lexus and BMW by offering premium features at a more competitive price, according to Roger McCormack, Buick director of marketing. The Regal, for example, sells for about $27,000, or about $8,000 to $10,000 less than a similarly sized and equipped — though much higher-powered — Lexus ES350 and BMW 3 Series.

That tactic is paying off. “About 40% of our sales are conquests from non-GM brands,” McCormack says, indicating that lots of new prospects to Buick are liking what they see. Just as importantly, GM isn’t simply cannibalizing sales from Chevrolet and Cadillac, two of its other remaining car brands.

According to TrueCar.com, an automotive buying service, Buick buyers at an average age of 67, were older than any in the industry, as of 2008. But the average has been trending younger lately, mostly because of the Enclave, with an average buyer age of 50. All luxury car manufacturers struggle to win younger customers they hope to convert into repeat buyers.

Image is also an important factor. “A few years ago no one in Southern California wanted to own a Buick. But suddenly there were waiting lists for the Enclave,” a big favorite with soccer moms, said Jesse Toprak, TrueCar.com vice president for industry trends. Buick isn’t yet a cool brand in Southern California “but the brand has made some headway,” he says.

Buick’s marketing strategy has been geared to attract a different sort of luxury customer, one that (as in the old days of the brand) isn’t trying to make a statement of wealth or class. Just as doctors once avoided Cadillac because it sent the wrong message to patients and neighbors, today’s Buick prospects may very well disdain “Master of the Universe” or Wall St. status.

The brand’s marketing team chose NCAA sports as a venue for its advertising and created a “highlight reel” of collegiate stars involved in charities meant to help the needy. With former University of North Dakota basketball star Manny Ohonme, originally from Nigeria, Buick contributed more than 2,000 pairs of shoes and socks to children during the 2011 Final Four championship. But Buick still has headway to make in coming up with a sticky tagline that encompasses what the brand stands for.

Because Buick is deliberately side-stepping status-seekers, its engines aren’t necessarily chosen for raw horsepower or high amounts of torque. Indeed, its new eAssist system, offered first on the LaCrosse, is meant to improve fuel efficiency by stopping the engine when the car stops at a light or in traffic and using electric assist to help it at speed.

Effort has been applied to cabin quietness, a virtue of Buicks for decades. Engineers studied how to remove or block sounds, and applied high-tech materials to subdue ambient noise. The goal is to allow passengers to converse in a normal speaking voice between front and rear rows while traveling, a small and important factor in a pleasant driving experience.

Buick has miles to go before it is a real challenger to BMW or Mercedes. But for the first time in decades, it has a shot at relevancy. And that may very well vindicate the decision of two U.S. presidents to make sure that GM didn’t go out of business.

Filed under: Contributors

In survey, 16% of school tech directors expect to have 1 tablet per student within 5 years

Click to enlarge. Source: Piper Jaffray

Whether counting heads at the Apple Store or buttonholing cell phone users at the Mall of America, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster is the master of the small survey that may or may not be significant.

His latest: A survey of 25 educational technology directors at a conference on integrating technology in the classroom. “While our sample is small,” he writes in a note to clients issued Monday, “so is the population of IT decision makers in the education field in the US.”

And what did he discover? Among his findings:

• 100% were testing or deploying iPads in their schools. 0% were testing or deploying Android tablets
• Their schools currently have an average of one computer for every 10 students
• Nearly half (12) expect to eventually deploy one computer per child; two of their schools already do
• More than a third (9) expect to deploy one tablet per child; one of them already does

Given the huge problems facing America’s schools, it’s a slender thread on which to base a vision of broad educational reform. (Munster quotes outgoing Apple retail chief Ron Johnson, who has suggested that the current crop of students might be “the last generation with backpacks.”)

But Munster is probably correct that the overwhelming preference for iPads over tablets running Google’s (GOOG) Android reflects the power of Apple’s (AAPL) first mover advantage. He writes:

“We also see a trend in education (which is mirrored in the enterprise) that familiarity with Apple devices among students (or employees) is causing a demand pull within institutions to also provide Apple devices.”

Below: The details of Munster’s survey results.

Filed under: Apple 2.0

Fortune’s curated selection of newsworthy tech stories from the weekend. Sign up to get the round-up delivered to you every day.

“Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” — Steve Jobs’ final words (The New York Times)

* Mark Zuckerberg offered a candid interview with Y Combinator, mentioning that he might have one or two regrets. “In Silicon Valley, you get this feeling that you have to be out here,” he said. “But it’s not the only place to be. If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. [Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me.” (TechCrunch)

* Walter Isaacson on why Bill Gates is smart, but Jobs was a genius. (The New York Times)

* Zynga CEO Mark Pincus revealed that he spent much of 2007 trying — and failing — to buy tech web site CNET. (Forbes)

* How Nokia (NOK) will help sell Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system. (Ars Technica)

* Two Flipboard competitors, Yahoo’s Livestand and Google’s Propeller, could launch some time this week. (All Things D)

* How Coupons.com rode the dying newspaper business to a $1 billion valuation. (Business Insider)

* Spotify hired away Jared Grusd, AOL’s SVP of business development and chief of strategy. His role with the new company is still unclear. (All Things D)

* Why digital medical records could save your life. (Mashable)

Don’t miss the latest tech news. Sign up now to get Today in Tech emailed each and every morning.

Filed under: Today in Tech

* From not to hot? Groupon considers raising IPO price

* Aaron Levie: Competing against the big guys

* Charlie Gasparino: Jon Corzine’s lesson for Wall Street risk-takers

* Morning Call: U.S. futures point lower, London falls early, European shares tumble and the Nikkei falls on yen intervention.

* In memoriam: Robert Pritzker

* Romer to Bernanke: It’s time for your Volcker moment

* Halloween horror: Contemptible costume party at a home foreclosure firm

* Henry Blodget: Apple’s Samsung problem

* Dave Kellogg: Why Palantir makes my head hurt

* Matt Levine: Ratings agencies incentivized by incentives

* Get Term Sheet: Sign up for our morning email on deals & deal-makers

* Luke Timmerman: Cancer drug dark ages are coming to an end

* Photo of the Day: French workers constructing the Statue of Liberty

* Matthew Ingram: Declaring bankruptcy in the attention economy

* Mark Zuckerberg: If I were starting a company now, I would have stayed in Boston

Filed under: Private Equity Deals, Term Sheet

A sister’s eulogy to Steve Jobs

When I read Mona Simpson’s, A Regular Guy, I was left with the impression that she didn’t much like her brother.

I was wrong.

If you haven’t seen it yet, set aside a few minutes this evening to read her eulogy to Steve Jobs, delivered at his memorial service and printed in Sunday’s New York Times.

And if you cared at all about the man who co-founded Apple (AAPL), bring a handkerchief.

Filed under: Apple 2.0

With one seventh as many employees as IBM, Apple generates 13 times more profit

In most recent quarter. Source: Google Finance, Apple Inc. Click to enlarge.

As of September, Apple (AAPL) had 60,400 full-time equivalent employees, according to the SEC Form 10-K it filed Wednesday, nearly 30% more than the 46,600 it reported in Q4 2010.

But those employees generate more profit per capita — by far — than any of Apple’s peers in the industry.

In the quarter that ended in September — not its best, mind you — the company generated sales of $28.3 billion and net income of $6.62 billion, or nearly $110,000 profit per employee.

Source: Google Finance, Company reports

That’s a useful metric because it gives you a yardstick by which to compare companies of very different sizes. Giant IBM (IBM), for example, with more than 425,000 employees, generated less than $9,000 profit per employee last quarter. Amazon’s (AMZN) 43,000 workers are even less efficient, bringing in only $1,458 apiece.

Apple came out on top in a similar survey that Pingdom ran last spring using annual rather than quarterly net income — thus generating numbers roughly four times larger. Below, their chart from May comparing 2011 to 2008, when Google (GOOG) was at the top of the heap.

Source: pingdom.com

NOTE: An earlier version of this story reported profit per employee in millions, rather than thousands of dollars. Rookie math error, but what’s a few orders of magnitude among friends?

Filed under: Apple 2.0