Jules Eden

Julian "Jules" Eden (born 1962) The General Medical Council (GMC) suspended him for nine months in 2007 after finding that he had prescribed irresponsibly or had failed to act in patients' best interests. He was removed from the medical register in 2009.

Early career Eden worked as an NHS general practitioner before leaving that position in 1999. While working with homeless people at The Passage in London, he developed a basic first-aid pack intended to help people living on the streets treat minor injuries.

e-med Eden established e-med in 2000. The service conducted consultations by email and offered diagnosis, prescriptions and referrals.

GMC proceedings At a GMC hearing in 2007, Eden faced allegations concerning three patients and two journalists who had applied for prescriptions through websites using his services. The panel found that he had acted irresponsibly, or not in the patients' best interests, in several cases.

The GMC suspended Eden from practising medicine for nine months. The panel stated that the issue was not the use of new technology itself, but the need to apply established prescribing safeguards to online consultations.

Writing and diving Eden answered readers' travel-health questions for The Independent on Sunday and wrote travel-health articles for The Guardian.

With Alex Clarke, he wrote the 2006 humour book 50 Reasons to Hate the French. He later co-authored FAQ Dive Medicine with Oliver Firth. Eden has also been involved in diving medicine; an account of litigation arising from the 2007 GMC case described diving medicine as the original focus of e-med before it developed into a general-practice service.