Elsevier Enhances MD Consult, Providing Physicians Faster Access to Crucial

Elsevier Enhances MD Consult, Providing Physicians Faster Access to Crucial

May 02, 2007

'Clinically Clever' Search Improves Query Interpretation
and Generates
Results Organized by how Physicians Diagnose and Treat
Patients; Free MD
Consult Access During May 2007

    ST. LOUIS, May 2 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- Elsevier, a
leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical
information products and services, has enhanced MD Consult,
its online clinical reference tool, to accelerate access to
information and educational content for better diagnosis
and treatment. Search results for the most common queries
are tailored to each stage of the diagnostic and clinical
workup, starting with assessing a patient's signs and
symptoms, then moving on to diagnosis, treatment, potential
complications, and prognosis.

    "Clinicians want fast, concise answers at the
point of care, and they want to have access to the most
important information about a medical condition from
high-quality trusted resources," says Dr. Jonathan
Teich, an attending physician in emergency medicine at
Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital and Chief Medical
Informatics Officer at Elsevier. "The new user
interface and smarter search tools enable healthcare
professionals to quickly access information in formats they
can put to immediate use."

    To encourage use of the new enhanced MD Consult,
Elsevier is offering free access to MD Consult
(www.mdconsult.com) throughout May 2007. During this time
users can test the site without a paid subscription.

    Enhancements

    MD Consult revamped its search capabilities and user
interface through an extensive process involving input from
physicians, medical students, librarians, and other health
care professionals around the world. Customers participated
in individual interviews, usability tests, focus groups,
surveys, collaborative design sessions, and live,
observational tests of sample searches.

    Innovations in the new version of MD Consult include:

    -- Recommended results for top searches: Recommended
results pages for the most popular search queries within MD
Consult are organized according to how physicians diagnose
and treat patients.

    -- Additional search recommendations: MD Consult
proactively guides clinicians to add details or refinements
to more general searches. For instance, typing in a term
such as "hepatitis" would return information
links immediately, and also would generate recommendations
for more specific terms such as "hepatitis A" or
"hepatitis C."

    -- Best resource suggestions: MD Consult includes an
extensive collection of world leading clinical reference
texts and journals. When clinicians are searching for a
specific book, author or journal, MD Consult provides a
direct link to access the desired resource.

    -- Easier, faster drug search: Whether clinicians type
in the brand name of a drug or its generic equivalent, MD
Consult generates a link to the correct information,
including drug indications, contraindications, adverse
reactions, FDA approvals, and safety notices.

    MD Consult is an integral component of how Elsevier is
continually working to improve outcomes in health and in
the business of health. Using it, clinicians can seek
current, evidence-based and experience-based answers to
specific clinical questions, obtain general overviews on
medical topics, make patient management decisions and find
drug information. The program also includes topical medical
news and provides patient educational materials.

    "MD Consult combines the best medical content with
the best clinical reference tools to help doctors help
patients," says Brian Nairn, CEO of Elsevier's Health
Sciences Division. "Elsevier has a tradition of
providing quality, reliable information for clinicians in
academic, patient care and research settings, and now our
customers will have faster access to critical clinical
information."

    MD Consult now serves over 280,000 users and is
licensed by more than
1,700 health care organizations worldwide, including nearly
95% of US medical schools. Subscribers search extensive
Elsevier content 1.5 million times per month and view more
than 8 million pages of clinical content, primarily during
daytime practice hours.

    About Elsevier

    Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific,
technical and Medical information products and services.
Working in partnership with the Global science and health
communities, Elsevier's 7,000 employees in over 70 Offices
worldwide publish more than 2,000 journals and 1,900 new
books per year, in addition to offering a suite of
innovative electronic products, such as ScienceDirect, MD
Consult, Scopus, bibliographic databases, and online
reference works.

    Elsevier is a global business headquartered in
Amsterdam, The Netherlands and has offices worldwide.
Elsevier is part of Reed Elsevier Group plc, a
world-leading publisher and information provider. Operating
in the science and medical, legal, education and
business-to-business sectors, Reed Elsevier provides
high-quality and flexible information solutions to users,
with increasing emphasis on the Internet as a means of
delivery. Reed Elsevier's ticker symbols are REN (Euronext
Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New
York Stock Exchange).


    For more information, please contact: 

    Tom Reller
    Elsevier
    Tel:   [phone]
    Email: [e-mail]