Friends Life is now offering group protection customers and their families 'Doctor Online' as part of its Best Doctors service.
The service allows members of the group critical illness and group cancer cover plans to send medical questions, simply and confidentially, to an approved GP via a secure online portal.
Through the Doctor Online service members will receive personalised answers to non-urgent medical questions within 72 hours.
All of the doctors are UK based and have been carefully selected to ensure they give the most reliable and up-to-date medical information, Friends Life said.
They are able to provide advice if a member has a medical question that is worrying them, or simply if they would like some reassurance about something their own doctor has discussed with them.
Doctor Online is intended to provide useful general information on health care issues related to different specialties.
Friends Life also recently launched global healthcare as an add-on to its protection policies with Best Doctors.
Anna Spender, head of group protection proposition at Friends Life, said: "Whether searching for an expert second medical opinion to review a diagnosis and treatment regime, or simply having questions and concerns that they would like to have answered by an expert, Best Doctors is available to help scheme members.
"Doctor Online is not designed to replace visiting your GP but it could offer members a convenient way of getting some peace of mind about a medical issue which has been worrying them. For businesses, it means employees could avoid taking time off work to visit their GP because they can get advice sent straight to their inbox.
Dave Marcus, director of client management at Best Doctors, said:"The volume of health information on the internet is huge and varies widely in terms of quality and reliability. It can be a stressful process attempting to access material that is both trustworthy and relevant, and the search process itself can be both confusing and time consuming.
"Best Doctors is committed to offering the best possible medical services to our members and their families, and we are delighted to be extending the services we provide to Friends Life customers with the addition of Doctor Online."
