Neutral Zone

The medical-supply business is a tangled web of manufacturers, distributors, group buyers and individual physicians.

Naples physician Michael Dent plans to bring them together to drive down costs and boost sales with an online marketplace called MedOfficeDirect.com.

Think of it as an Amazon.com without the warehouses: Dent wants his site to manage the sale of hundreds of thousands of non-acute medical supplies to medical practitioners and purchasing groups, handling only the transactions and leaving the distribution to its partners.