If Clinicbook is successful, it could spell an end to waiting around your dentist’s or doctor’s office.

That’s the idea behind the website created by former University of B.C, students who just wrapped up a $75,000 first round of seed funding for an online service that matches patients with health care professionals.

“My parents are both medical doctors and my dad works primarily in walk-in clinics,” said Robin McFee, a co-founder of Clinicbook who is part way through his degree in electrical and computer engineering at UBC. “The receptionist hates how many people call in to ask how long the wait is.

“That’s the initial opportunity we identified.”

Clinicbook is among companies at the CONNECT conference, being held this Tuesday in Vancouver, that brings together early-stage technology entrepreneurs and industry veterans.

Clinicbook’s site, at www.clinicbook.ca, launched with a directory of health care clinics and facilities, with dentists, optometrists, physiotherapists and others in the field being added.

“We wanted to do all of them. In the same way there was no resource to find doctors, there was no resource to find any health professionals,” said McFee.

Besides offering a search engine, the site plans to invite users to post their own reviews of practitioners and services – making Clinicbook the health care version of OpenTable, the restaurant review and booking service.

McFee said there is no incentive for doctors to open up their offices to online bookings with the physician shortage in Canada, but Clinicbook is starting that service for dentists.

“We are going to do all the private health care providers — dentists, optometrists, physiotherapists and chiropractors,” said McFee.

Clinicbook also plans to add information on waiting times at various clinics to put an end to the lineups and phone calls from anxious patients, a feature it will debut at CONNECT.

“Our hope is down the road, in six [to] nine months, you’ll be able to go online and identify the clinic with the lowest wait time where you can get seen at first,” said McFee.

McFee, who launched the site with co-founders and UBC grads Winnie Lai and Joel Matsumoto, said they expect to add the dental-appointment service later this year.

“We are hoping to have 50 dentists in the Vancouver area before we launch,” he said. “The cool thing about it is that you will be able to go on the site and, instead of doing the whole phone tag thing, you can go in and see all their available spaces.

“You can do it anytime you want, you can go online in the evening, see what time works for you and book that appointment.”

The fledgling company was chosen to join a UBC group travelling to the Silicon Valley to present to a panel of venture capitalists.

The trip resulted in part of the seed funding coming from a Silicon Valley angel investor with the rest contributed by friends and family. The visit also prompted Eric Moe, a co-founder of OpenTable, to join Clinicbook’s board of advisers.

Listings on the site are free, with the listing companies and health care providers only paying when someone books an appointment.

CONNECT runs from 4 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 12 at the Vancouver Convention Centre. For more details, check the conference website at www.connectnext.ca.

gshaw@vancouversun.com