Information services provider Thomson Reuters, US, has announced that Morehead Memorial Hospital - a not-for-profit, 108-bed hospital in Eden, N.C. - has implemented its Clinical Xpert to improve care through real-time clinical surveillance and instant access to patient data.

A mobile data system, Clinical Xpert gathers clinical data from across the hospital information system and delivers real-time patient data to any caregiver at the point-of -care through a web portal or mobile devices. Using CareFocus, one of the components of the Clinical Xpert suite, caregivers can quickly identify at-risk patients and respond immediately - improving care, saving lives, and reducing costs.

Morehead originally identified Clinical Xpert as a way to manage scheduled and unscheduled system downtime. The solution allows continued access to clinical information even when the hospital information system briefly goes offline, ensuring clinicians have uninterrupted access to critical patient data. Recognising the immediate impact CareFocus could have on patient safety and clinical quality, Morehead implemented the solution.

Named the KLAS Category Leader for Mobile Data Systems for eight consecutive years, Clinical Xpert helps providers improve clinical quality and patient safety while reducing treatment costs.

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Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced that St. Mary's Medical Center has selected ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, as the organisation's electronic order set solution. Located in Huntington, W. Va., St. Mary's Medical Center claims to be the region's leading medical provider. It is Joint Commission accredited with Centers of Excellence in cardiac care, cancer treatment, emergency/trauma services and neuroscience.

ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, is an easily customisable order set authoring and management solution. It provides flexible integration into clinical processes to streamline the delivery of standardised care for improved patient safety, outcomes, clinician performance and regulatory compliance. Built upon ProVation Medical's clinician-designed technology platform, one of ProVation Order Sets' primary values is the continuous updates to clinical content and medical evidence. This includes direct links to UpToDate, the resource of choice for more than 360,000 clinicians.

Central to this capability is the One Click Updates tool. The tool leverages UpToDate's Practice Changing Updates, which highlights new recommendations that could potentially change usual clinical practice. Enabled by a unique, structured approach to data management, One Click Updates alerts end users to evidence that may trigger the need to modify particular order sets. It then enables users to review recommended updates and apply them in a single step across multiple order sets.

UpToDate covers more than 7,700 topics in 15 medical specialties and includes more than 80,000 pages of text and graphics, as well as links to Medline abstracts, more than 260,000 references and a drug database. Content is continuously reviewed and updated by physician editors and authors.

In addition to integrated links to UpToDate and other trusted sources of medical evidence, ProVation Order Sets offer the flexibility to link additional clinical resources based upon client needs and preferences. Further, to help facilities achieve the highest possible degree of automation, ProVation Order Sets feature vendor-neutral mapping and export capabilities that allow for flexible integration into any facility or vendor EMR or CPOE system.

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Information services provider Thomson Reuters, US, has expanded its Micromedex CareNotes patient education system to include coverage in 15 languages. Until now CareNotes was available only in English and Spanish. Customers will now have access to a core set of CareNotes and DrugNotes in Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), French (Canadian), German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

Used by over 3,000 hospitals, the CareNotes System has been a leading source for complete and reliable patient education materials for more than 10 years. With this enhanced offering, CareNotes seeks to provide customers with translated patient education to meet the needs of over 80 percent of the US non-English speaking population.

Presented as fully customisable documents, CareNotes helps educate patients about their conditions, medications, laboratory tests, follow-up care, psychosocial issues, post-discharge care, and continuing health. By providing a single, trusted source for evidence-based patient education materials, CareNotes helps hospitals and health providers improve patient compliance with care plans, patient satisfaction, and clinical outcomes. CareNotes patient education content can be accessed online and can also be integrated within other electronic hospital and healthcare information systems.

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Drug information and medication management solutions provider Gold Standard/Elsevier, US, has announced the launch of MEDcounselor Languages, a module that provides trusted MEDcounselor consumer medication information in 12 foreign languages. The new MEDcounselor Languages will enable healthcare providers to help non-English speaking patients better understand their drug therapy, take their medications safely, and avoid potentially harmful errors.

Based on state regulations and customer requests, the new languages offered within MEDcounselor Languages include Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Creole (Haitian), French, Japanese, Italian, Korean, Polish, Russian, Tagalog and Vietnamese - along with currently available Spanish and English. Additional languages will be available in 2011.

MEDcounselor Languages offers peer-reviewed content on the most frequently used US prescription and over-the-counter drugs (such as medication uses, interactions and side effects), printable patient handouts, and compliance with national standards for Consumer Medication Information (CMI). MEDcounselor Languages are available as an added module to Gold Standard's Clinical Pharmacology, a point-of-care drug reference, and Alchemy, an integrated drug database and decision support engine.

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Healthcare publisher Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), part of Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has announced that SUNY Downstate Medical Center will provide the expert clinical content from Lippincott's Nursing Procedures and Skills to nurses in their facility. SUNY Downstate Medical Center is a leading urban medical center in the US, serving over 2.3 million people.

Lippincott's Nursing Procedures and Skills gives nurses accurate, step-by-step guidance for almost 1,000 procedures. The online resource provides skills checklists and competency tests for each procedure to help facilities verify staff competence. Each procedure undergoes a thorough annual review process to ensure the most up-to-date clinical information is provided. Facilities can customise the programme and procedures to meet their specific needs.

Earlier this month, LWW announced that Lippincott's Nursing Procedures and Skills is now optimised for Apple web-enabled devices. The latest enhancement will give nurses immediate access to critical procedures, quick lists and skills checklists, including videos and images from anywhere in the hospital.

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Healthcare technologies and services provider QuadraMed has announced a partnership with Clinical Practice Model Resource Center (CPMRC), an Elsevier firm engaged in developing clinical practice guidelines for healthcare. Under the deal, CPMRC will provide QuadraMed's clients with nursing and allied health clinical documentation, care planning, and clinical practice guidelines, as well as transformation services.

CPMRC brings evidence-based clinical content products and practice transformation services that assist healthcare organisations in creating a healthy work culture and interdisciplinary integration. The partnership will enable meaningful clinician workflow based on evidence-based best practices, which will accelerate documentation processes and help improve the quality of care. With QuadraMed's integrated Computerised-Patient Record (QCPR) solutions, health systems will no longer need to develop their own content from scratch, which will enable nurses and allied health professionals to bring evidence-based information to the patient directly at the point of care.

As a result of this partnership, QuadraMed clients will be able to join the CPMRC International Consortium, a voluntary organisation made up of hundreds of hospitals, health systems, and educational institutions. Through CPMRC's interdisciplinary content, the integrated solution will also enhance the education of clinicians on the use of health information technology, which will help them meet meaningful-use requirements.

CPMRC's Clinical Practice Models embrace the concept of providing a complete solution to assist healthcare organisations with practice transformation and the transition to electronic health records. Their integrated solutions help standardise care, while ensuring seamless adoption by the clinical team.

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Content enhancement and knowledge services provider Scope eKnowledge Center, a Quatrro Group company, has announced an initiative to support the continued enhancement of ProQuest's Medical Evidence Matters. ProQuest's Medical Evidence Matters online healthcare knowledge management system is designed to assist decision makers in their treatment choices for patients, allowing clinicians to assess therapy options for known medical conditions by comparing outcomes from peer-reviewed literature.

Scope's team of medical subject matter experts will be supporting the Medical Evidence Matters' medical content team, to extract data such as type of study, sampling methodology, demographic data, test results, statistical analysis, therapy and outcomes from medical treatment research articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The aim is to enable ProQuest to expand the research tool to cover more disease states.

According to Scope CEO, R. Sivadas, Scope is uniquely positioned to serve as a content provider for ProQuest's enhancement of its Medical Evidence Matters tool, enabling end users to spend less time reading, and more time with patients. The company's in-house MDs are currently providing services that support the Medical Evidence Matter's medical content team. Through this support, ProQuest expects to continue crucial, timely updates while also expanding the disease modules offered.

ProQuest's decision to enhance the Medical Evidence Matters tool with more disease states meant more editorial resources. Craig Emerson, Vice-President, Editorial for ProQuest, has said that ProQuest evaluated Scope's evidence-based medicine editorial capabilities and felt Scope will be a solid contributor.

ProQuest creates specialised information resources and technologies that propel successful research, discovery and lifelong learning. The company offers the expertise of brands such as CSA, UMI, Chadwyck-Healey, SIRS and eLibrary.

Scope eKnowledge Center is an award winning provider of outsourced, cost-effective content enhancement and knowledge services to the global information industry. The company uses a combination of deep subject matter expertise in a number of business and STM domains, innovative technology and proprietary intellectual property to provide world class services. In operation for over 22 years, Scope has built a clientele loyal to its abstracting, indexing, semantic enrichment, database/directory development and content authoring solutions. Scope is also the publisher of the daily Knowledgespeak newsletter, an authoritative news service focusing on the STM information industry.

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Multinational computer, technology and IT consulting corporation IBM, US, and ActiveHealth Management, an Aetna subsidiary, have unveiled a new cloud computing and clinical decision support solution. IBM and ActiveHealth Management worked together to create the Collaborative Care Solution that gives physicians and patients access to the information they need to improve the overall quality of care, without the need to invest in new infrastructure. The solution is built on combining IBM's Health Information Framework, IBM Initiate Exchange and advanced health analytics from Cognos 8 Business Intelligence and predictive analytics from IBM Research with ActiveHealth CareEngine clinical decision support and the Active CareTeam.

Patients often have to carry their health history information with them from visit to visit. Doctors don't always have the information they need when they need to quickly make patient care decisions. The Collaborative Care Solution addresses these issues by gathering patients' health data from multiple sources to create a detailed patient record.

The solution employs advanced analytics software to provide an innovative approach to patient care in which physicians can easily access and automatically analyse a patient's condition. By combining information from electronic medical records, claims, medication and lab data with ActiveHealth's evidence-based clinical decision support CareEngine and delivering it through an IBM cloud computing platform, doctors will be able to deliver more complete and accurate decisions about patient care. Further, this solution can help reduce spending on ineffective treatments and unnecessary tests. According to a recent study by Thomson Reuters, approximately $800 billion is wasted each year in the U.S on health care considered ineffective. It can also help provide better insight for treating patients with chronic conditions such as coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure and diabetes, which account for 80 percent of all healthcare costs.

With all healthcare data and IT resources managed in a cloud environment, the system will enable the coordination of patient care among teams, so doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, aides, therapists and pharmacists can easily access, share and address information about patients from a single source. The solution can also show trends in how patients are responding, for instance, to treatment for chronic asthma or adhering to drug regimens and automatically alert doctors to conflicting or missed prescriptions.

For one fixed monthly fee, healthcare organisations will have access to all the tools and services without having to make significant upfront investments - avoiding the challenge of updating systems when clinical guidelines or reporting requirements change or when patient loads grow. Additionally, the solution provides advanced analytics that help physicians or entire healthcare organisations measure their performance against national or hospital quality standards.

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Healthcare publisher Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), part of Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has announced that Lippincott's Nursing Procedures and Skills is now optimised for Apple web-enabled devices, offering nurses convenient and efficient access to nearly 1,000 essential nursing procedures.

Lippincott's Nursing Procedures and Skills gives nurses accurate, step-by-step guidance for almost 1,000 procedures. The subscription-based, online service provides skills checklists and competency tests for each procedure to help facilities verify their staff's competence. Each procedure undergoes a thorough annual review process to ensure the most up-to-date clinical information is provided. Facilities can customise the programme and procedures to meet their needs.

An increasing number of healthcare professionals are using Web-enabled devices to improve patient care. The latest enhancement to Lippincott's Nursing Procedures and Skills will give nurses immediate access to critical procedures, quick lists and skills checklists, including videos and images from anywhere in the hospital.

To access Lippincott's Nursing Procedures and Skills, customers can go to http://procedures.lww.com via their iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and enter a username/password to access their institutional account. There is no additional charge for current subscribers.

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E-Resource Access and Management Services (ERAMS) provider Serials Solutions, US, will add new consolidated reports to its 360 Counter e-resource assessment service. 360 Counter, part of Serials Solutions 360 services, enables librarians to assess collections, justify expenditures and optimise purchases. The introduction of these consolidated reports gives 360 Counter customers the ability to take their complex usage data and create six new pre-filtered reports.

These new reports provide better visibility into how collections are being accessed and used, including the top 100 collection titles receiving the heaviest usage; those that are the most expensive; those with a positive or negative percent change in use; and the comparison of titles provided by two or more content providers, which takes advantage of 360 Counter overlap analysis. Librarians can also generate a report, listing titles alphabetically so it is easier to navigate and drill-down to find information.

The pre-filtered functionality of consolidated reports includes titles from two or more providers; journals and platforms with a positive or negative change in use; top 100 journals calculated by use; and the 100 most expensive journals based on cost-per-use. Acquisition librarians will now have easier access to critical information about the use of their collections. Also, they will be able to quickly locate required nuggets of data so they can look at usage of material vis-à-vis acquisition costs.

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Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO), US, has announced that a new service within its DynaMed point-of-care clinical reference will link clinicians to cost assistance programmes designed to help patients afford their medications. DynaMed drug topics now include links to NeedyMeds, a non-profit organisation that provides patients with free information on how to obtain medication cost assistance - with or without health insurance.

To help clinicians provide comprehensive information on pharmaceutical cost assistance to their patients, DynaMed has added direct links from most drug topics to the related NeedyMeds information page. The Medication Cost Assistance Program section of the drug topic can be referenced to share information with the patient on cost assistance and/or discounted rates for drugs. NeedyMeds also provides information on federal and state programmes for medical care for adults and children, and cost assistance programmes for medical supplies.

DynaMed is a clinical reference tool created by physicians for physicians and other healthcare professionals for use primarily at the point-of-care - providing the best available evidence for making informed clinical decisions. With clinically-organised summaries for thousands of topics and daily updates, DynaMed claims to be the only evidence-based reference shown to answer most clinical questions during practice.

Most of the current assistance programmes require US residency, but non-US programmes can be added to DynaMed as the information becomes available.

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Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced that East Tennessee Children's Hospital has selected ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, to automate the creation, deployment and maintenance of order sets. Located in Knoxville, Tenn., the 152-bed East Tennessee Children's Hospital is a private, independent, not-for-profit pediatric medical center caring for children in 16 counties in East Tennessee.

ProVation Order Sets claims to be an easily customisable order set authoring and management solution that provides flexible integration into clinical processes to streamline the delivery of standardised care for improved patient safety, outcomes, clinician performance and regulatory compliance. Built upon ProVation Medical's clinician-designed technology platform, one of the primary values of ProVation Order Sets is the continuous updates to clinical content and medical evidence. This includes direct links to UpToDate, the resource of choice for more than 360,000 clinicians.

Central to this capability is the One Click Updates tool. The tool leverages UpToDate's Practice Changing Updates, which highlights new recommendations that could potentially change usual clinical practice. Enabled by a unique, structured approach to data management, One Click Updates alerts end users to evidence that may trigger the need to modify particular order sets. It then enables users to review recommended updates and apply them in a single step across multiple order sets.

UpToDate covers more than 7,700 topics in 15 medical specialties and includes more than 80,000 pages of text and graphics, as well as links to Medline abstracts, more than 260,000 references and a drug database. Content is continuously reviewed and updated by physician editors and authors.

In addition to integrated links to UpToDate and other trusted sources of medical evidence, ProVation Order Sets offer the flexibility to link additional clinical resources based on client needs and preferences. Further, to help facilities achieve the highest possible degree of automation, ProVation Order Sets feature vendor-neutral mapping and export capabilities that allow for flexible integration into any facility or vendor EMR or CPOE system.

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Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO), US, has announced the release of Food Industry Watch, an executive decision support tool. The new resource is designed specifically to support the information needs of corporate executives in the hospitality, food service and food production industries.

Food Industry Watch offers access to more than 200 evidence-based, industry-related reports covering topics such as compliance & regulation; food availability; food production; food safety & quality; food science & technology; food service, management; and marketing and specialty foods. The resource has adapted EBSCO's core evidence-based methodology to areas of interest to corporate executives. The evidence-based approach identifies, selects and systematically evaluates pertinent information and creates a synthesis of the best available evidence.

EBSCO's experience with evidence-based content includes Sustainability Watch and Corporate Learning Watch as well as the point-of-care resources it provides to hospitals and other medical institutions including the clinical decision support resource DynaMed. Food Industry Watch joins a collection of food industry databases available through EBSCO including Food Science Source and FSTA - Food Science & Technology Abstracts.

Food Industry Watch may be integrated into corporate portals and Intranets. The EBSCOhost Integration Toolkit allows EBSCO's content to be incorporated into an organisation's workflow-providing seamless access to premium content.

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Drug information and medication management solutions provider Gold Standard/Elsevier, US, has announced that the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) has licensed MEDcounselor Drug Information, Drug IDentifer and Drug Interaction modules for its consumer website ConsumerMedSafety.org. ISMP is a federally certified patient safety organisation that focuses on preventing medication errors and adverse drug events, and offers legal protection and confidentiality for submitted patient safety and error reports.

Gold Standard licenses its MEDcounselor modules to pharmacies, consumer health information websites, online communities, health systems and managed care organisations. A specially created 'Toolkit' allows organisations to integrate MEDcounselor modules with their existing healthcare content and add search functions and links to drug information from their own Web sites or applications.

MEDcounselor modules now available via ConsumerMedSafety.org include Drug Information; Drug Identifier; and Drug Interactions.

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Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced that Southern Ohio Medical Center has selected ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, to automate the creation, deployment and maintenance of order sets. Located in Portsmouth, Ohio, the 222-bed Southern Ohio Medical Center provides emergency and surgical care, as well as a wide range of other inpatient and outpatient services.

ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, claims to be an easily customisable order set authoring and management solution that provides flexible integration into clinical processes to streamline the delivery of standardised care for improved patient safety, outcomes, clinician performance and regulatory compliance. Built upon ProVation Medical's clinician-designed technology platform, one of ProVation Order Sets' primary values is the continuous updates to clinical content and medical evidence, including direct links to UpToDate, the resource of choice for more than 360,000 clinicians.

Central to this capability is the One Click Updates tool, which allows hospitals to easily and automatically update order sets to keep current with the latest medical evidence. Enabled by a unique, structured approach to data management, One Click Updates alerts end users to evidence that may trigger the need to modify particular order sets. It then enables users to review recommended updates and apply them in a single step across multiple order sets.

UpToDate covers over 7,700 topics in 15 medical specialties and includes more than 80,000 pages of text and graphics, as well as links to Medline abstracts, more than 260,000 references and a drug database. Content is continuously reviewed and updated by physician editors and authors.

In addition to integrated links to UpToDate and other trusted sources of medical evidence, ProVation Order Sets offer the flexibility to link additional clinical resources based upon client needs and preferences. Further, to help facilities achieve the highest possible degree of automation, ProVation Order Sets feature vendor-neutral mapping and export capabilities that allow for flexible integration into any facility or vendor EMR or CPOE system.

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Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO), US, has announced the launch of Corporate Learning Watch, a new evidence-based monitoring service that investigates learning techniques for corporate learning professionals. The service will focus on methods that can be used within businesses to facilitate employee learning.

Corporate Learning Watch builds on EBSCO's collection of expert and peer-reviewed corporate learning-related literature to present the user with non-biased actionable intelligence-an executive decision-support tool based on proprietary, evidence-based content. The resource uses a systematic approach to monitor developments in the literature and follow an established multi-step evidence-based literature surveillance process. Corporate Learning Watch provides users with the latest expert analysis and findings on corporate learning issues, all based on the evidence that is presented in the literature.

Corporate Learning Watch has adapted EBSCO's core evidence-based methodology to areas of interest to corporate executives. The evidence-based approach identifies, selects and systematically evaluates pertinent information and creates a synthesis of the best available evidence. EBSCO's experience with evidence-based content includes Sustainability Watch and the upcoming Food Industry Watch as well as the point-of-care resources it provides to hospitals and other medical institutions including the clinical decision support resource DynaMed.

Corporate Learning Watch may be integrated into corporate portals and Intranets. The EBSCOhost Integration Toolkit allows EBSCO's content to be incorporated into an organisation's workflow, providing seamless access to premium content.

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The BMJ Evidence Centre, part of the BMJ Group, UK, and the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust have announced that both parties will work together to pilot a standardised checklist of actions to help clinicians make the best decisions for their patients.

Beginning June 1, 2010, the predefined lists of orders and actions for gastro-intestinal bleeding, called Action Sets, will be instantly accessed through the Cerner electronic patient records system. They will provide doctors and nurses with evidence-based recommendations to guide treatment decisions, ensuring that patients receive the best and most appropriate care and helping to avoid mistakes.

The initiative is expected to enable clinicians at Royal Free to quickly access information about specific treatment outcomes; analyse that data to determine best practices; and quickly share the findings with other trusts - a process that is virtually impossible with paper-based medical records.

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Information services provider Thomson Reuters, US, has announced that Advantage Suite 5.0, the latest version of the market-leading decision support system for healthcare payers, will be available later this year. The Advantage Suite is used by health insurers, employers and state Medicaid agencies to integrate and analyse data in order to generate intelligence that helps them manage the cost and quality of healthcare.

Health plans, for example, use Advantage Suite for trend management, benchmarking, provider performance management and proactive care management. According to the company, Advantage Suite 5.0 will continue to deliver sophisticated analytics while improving usability, accessibility and reporting capabilities.

New features include web access that accommodates the workflow needs of data analysts and business managers; dashboard capabilities that enable users to easily create customised reports and distribute them to executives and other key stakeholders; and improved user experience delivered via an intuitive, easy-to-use interface.

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Thomson IP Management Services, part of Information services provider Thomson Reuters, US, has announced the release of Thomson IP Manager 3.1, an enterprise-scalable software application for intellectual asset management.

Thomson IP Manager helps companies more effectively manage their intellectual assets, automating the tracking of innovations, patents, trademarks, designs, licensing agreements and more. With the release of version 3.1, users will be able to pull information from their document management system directly into their portfolio management programme and easily share it with decision makers throughout the organisation. The new release offers full integration with Documentum and Interwoven, two document management systems commonly used by Thomson IP Management Services customers. It features several other system enhancements, including the ability to quickly propagate updates to large sets of records and to configure data entry forms so they are more user-friendly and efficient.

Thomson IP Manager brings together the necessary components for IP management in a centralised repository, integrating portfolio data, work flow task management and LDAP synchronisation with corporate user data.

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Healthcare consulting and software solutions company Clinical Architecture, US, has announced that Picis, a global provider of innovative information solutions for acute care settings, has selected its Symedical interoperability solution.

Symedical enables clinical applications to share patient information as actionable discrete data. Picis chose to integrate Symedical into its CareSuite family of high-acuity solutions to support new medication decision support capabilities.

Clinical Architecture specialises in meeting the integration and interoperability needs of healthcare through niche consulting and application development. With Symedical, the company has introduced a unique approach to automating the creation and ongoing management of clinical terminology maps. According to the company, meaningful clinical decision support requires a consistently accurate representation of the patient's clinical context which is possible with Symedical.

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Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has released a new version of its electronic order set solution, ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support. The new release includes the unique One Click Updates tool, which allows hospitals to easily and automatically update order sets to keep current with the latest medical evidence.

A customisable order set authoring and management solution, ProVation Order Sets provides flexible integration into clinical processes to streamline the delivery of standardised care for improved patient safety, outcomes, clinician performance and regulatory compliance. One of its primary values is the continuous updates to clinical content and medical evidence, including direct links to UpToDate, which claims to be the resource of choice for more than 360,000 clinicians.

The One Click Updates tool leverages UpToDate's Practice Changing Updates feature, which highlights new recommendations that may change usual clinical practice. Enabled by a unique, structured approach to data management, One Click Updates alerts end users to evidence that may trigger the need to modify particular order sets, allowing them to review recommended updates and apply them in a single step across multiple order sets.

Specifically, the One Click Updates feature provides a list of new practice-changing updates in a live newsfeed; identifies a list of the order sets or care plans that may be impacted by each update item; recommends specific edits to the content of the impacted order sets; and allows the user to apply recommended edits to some or all of the affected order sets or care plans in a single step.

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Information services provider Thomson Reuters, US, has announced that Hackensack University Medical Center has deployed Thomson Reuters NeoFax Online to provide physicians, nurses, and pharmacy staff in its Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) with electronic, evidence-based drug information. Hackensack University Medical Center is a 775-bed academic medical center serving northern New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area.

NeoFax Online delivers neonatal reference information. It enables clinicians to check on potential drug interactions, delivers, and provides dosing calculations that account for infants' ever-changing weight. The electronic version of NeoFax was deployed by the hospital to reduce the chance of medication errors.

The NICU's new workflow eliminates several steps that can lead to medication errors and NeoFax Online assists with the hospital's ongoing infection control initiative. Books are difficult to clean and can carry and transfer infections. Removing contact with a book during the administration of medication eliminates this potential source of infection within the NICU.

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STM and scholarly publisher Wiley-Blackwell, US, has announced that its evidence-based clinical decision support product, Essential Evidence Plus (EE+), is now accessible from mobile devices. Physicians on the move can now easily find answers to challenging point-of-care questions from their iPhone, IPod Touch, Android, Blackberry or other Smartphones.

EE+ is accessible through the web, handheld computer (Pocket PC or Palm OS) and now mobile devices. The product features more than 13,000 topics, guidelines, abstracts, and evidence based summaries which are integrated and hyperlinked to content and tools, including Cochrane Reviews, daily POEM literature alerts, decision support tools and interactive diagnostic test calculators.

Topics in EE+ are written by leading clinicians and peer-reviewed by medical experts who evaluate and summarise clinical findings from thousands of medical journals. A 'Bottom Line' feature highlighting the most important recommendations by topic provides essential data for informed point-of-care decision making. All EE+ content includes a 'strength of evidence' rating for each recommendation to guide practitioners toward evidence most likely to improve health outcomes. Summary tables for at-a-glance information, algorithms for problem solving, and an extensive image library linked to a dermatology expert system are also included to optimise patient care.

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Drug decision support provider Gold Standard/Elsevier, US, has announced that it will continue to publish transparent drug pricing information, including average wholesale price (AWP) and all other current and future pricing benchmarks. The announcement comes amidst statements by other drug database suppliers indicating they will discontinue publishing AWP in 2011.

Gold Standard/Elsevier supports transparent price benchmarks for payers (health plans, patients, government agencies and employers), pharmacies and other providers for prescription drugs. The company publishes reported and calculated drug prices that are clearly distinguished within the database, and adheres to strict internal policies for populating reported versus calculated pricing fields. Drug company reported prices of AWP, WAC (wholesale acquisition cost), CMS FUL (Federal Upper Limit), and Direct Price are included in Gold Standard’s database.

Gold Standard/Elsevier provides comprehensive drug pricing data via its Alchemy integrated drug database and ProspectoRx web-based drug pricing and analysis tool. Both sources offer the most frequent and accurate updates in the industry. Following review and confirmation by editorial professionals, price changes are published ‘live’ throughout the day as they are reported by drug companies. The company’s unique Price Change Indicator tracks pricing change catalysts consistently, reporting on whether the source came from the drug company’s reports, billing unit changes or errors.

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Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced that CHRISTUS Health has selected ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, as its electronic order set solution. In addition to automating development and maintenance, ProVation Order Sets will provide clinicians at 24 CHRISTUS Health facilities with point-of-care access to order sets and other intuitive clinical decision support tools.

ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, claims to be an easily customisable order set authoring and management solution that provides flexible integration into clinical processes to streamline the delivery of standardised care for improved patient safety, outcomes, clinician performance and regulatory compliance. Built upon ProVation Medical’s clinician-designed technology platform, ProVation Order Sets offer automatic linking to the clinical decision support content of UpToDate, the resource of choice for more than 360,000 clinicians.

UpToDate covers more than 7,700 topics in 15 medical specialties and includes more than 80,000 pages of text and graphics, as well as links to Medline abstracts more than 260,000 references and a drug database. Content is continuously reviewed and updated by physician editors and authors.

In addition to integrated links to UpToDate and other trusted sources of medical evidence, ProVation Order Sets offer the flexibility to link additional clinical resources based upon client needs and preferences. Further, to help facilities achieve the highest possible degree of automation, ProVation Order Sets feature vendor-neutral mapping and export capabilities that allow for flexible integration into any facility or vendor EMR or CPOE system.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced that the Cleveland Clinic Center for Continuing Education will provide point-of-care Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit to users of MD Consult and First Consult. Users of First Consult and MD Consult will earn Point-Of-Care CME Credit as they perform searches and access relevant content to answer patient care questions. First Consult provides instant access to information on evaluation, diagnosis, clinical management, prognosis and prevention. MD Consult, a clinical reference tool, is utilised by more than 2000 healthcare organisations and 95 percent of all medical schools in the US.

After performing a search and finding the answer in MD Consult’s breadth of clinical content, physicians can then click on ‘Request CME’ and complete a short form from the Cleveland Clinic Center for Continuing Education. The Cleveland Clinic Center for Continuing Education is accredited at the highest level (with commendation) by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. By submitting the short form, physicians can earn 0.5 American Medical Association PRA (Physician’s Recognition Award) Category 1 Credit(s) for each search conducted through MD Consult and First Consult.

It has been observed that physicians are turning increasingly to the Internet for clinical information. According to a November 2009 survey commissioned by Google, 86 percent of US physicians now use the Internet to gather health, medical or prescription drug information. A 2009 Manhattan Research survey put the number at 89 percent, and one-third of physicians have claimed that they changed a patient’s treatment as the result of an Internet search. Instead of relying on the unproven information available widely on the Internet, Elsevier sees physicians gravitating more to the evidence-based clinical content provided by online tools such as MD Consult and First Consult.

MD Consult delivers instant access to full-text articles from more than 80 medical journals and Clinics, 50 medical references across a range of specialties, clinically relevant drug information, and more than 10,000 patient handouts in English and Spanish. First Consult offers an online database on patient evaluation, diagnosis, treatment, tests and prevention, interactive access to potential diagnoses and video and animated guidance on common medical procedures.

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UBM TechInsights, a provider of sophisticated information services, consulting, and management software for technology companies, has announced the formation of a Business Intelligence group.

The Business Intelligence services leverage UBM TechInsights' analysis libraries, expertise and industry insight to provide actionable reports for companies doing competitive intelligence, due diligence and/or patent licensing in the consumer electronics, semiconductor, automotive, clean technologies, legal, medical devices, and software markets. The group will also be producing reports specifically geared towards the investment community.

UBM TechInsights' 300 worldwide engineers and 19,000 reference analysis reports contain proprietary information on over 50,000 systems, components, and sub-assemblies. The Business Intelligence Group is uniquely positioned to provide customers with the knowledge they need to make informed business decisions.

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Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has announced that the St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center has selected ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, to automate the creation, deployment and maintenance of evidence-based order sets. Located in Paterson, New Jersey, the St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center is an academic tertiary medical centre and state designated trauma centre.

ProVation Order Sets is projected as an easily customisable order set authoring and management solution. The tool seeks to provide flexible integration into clinical processes to streamline the delivery of standardised care for improved patient safety, outcomes, clinician performance and regulatory compliance. Built upon ProVation Medical’s technology platform, ProVation Order Sets offer automatic linking to the clinical decision support content of UpToDate, which covers over 8,300 topics in 16 medical specialties. UpToDate includes more than 97,000 pages of text and graphics, as well as links to Medline abstracts, more than 385,000 references and a drug database. Content is continuously reviewed and updated by physician editors and authors.

In addition to integrated links to UpToDate and other sources of medical evidence, ProVation Order Sets are claimed to offer the flexibility to link additional clinical resources based upon client needs and preferences. Further, to help facilities achieve the highest possible degree of automation, the tools feature vendor-neutral mapping and export capabilities that allow for flexible integration into any facility or vendor EMR or CPOE system.

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Information services provider Thomson Reuters, US, has announced that Micromedex clinical decision support and CareNotes patient education content will be integrated within the M2 Health Care Information System (HCIS). M2 is an information systems vendor assisting healthcare organisations in fully maximising their return on HCIS investments.

As a result, hospitals that use the M2 HCIS will be able to seamlessly connect clinicians directly to Micromedex referential summary documents and relevant, evidence-based patient education at any point in the care process. Micromedex clinical decision support will be delivered via InfoButton, an easy-to-implement solution that integrates within a hospital's electronic medical record system, computerised prescription order entry system, pharmacy system, or Web portal. With quick access to abbreviated drug, disease, and lab content, along with the ability to link to more detailed clinical reference material, InfoButton supports the highest standard of care and speeds clinical decision making.

CareNotes helps healthcare information systems generate education material that is tailored for the patient and covers medications, diagnosis, procedures, and tests. With topics including diet, exercise, disease prevention, and a host of ‘How To’ documents, CareNotes empowers patients to actively participate in their care, and also helps meet The Joint Commission and OBRA '90 patient education guidelines. This solution enable physicians, nurses, and pharmacists to make the right clinical decisions and help their patients take a more active role in their recovery, all without disrupting their workflow.

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Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced that Athens Regional Medical Center has selected ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, to automate order set creation, deployment and maintenance. The 315-bed Athens Regional Medical Center is the cornerstone of Athens Regional Health Services, one of Northeast Georgia’s largest healthcare systems.

ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, is an easily customisable order set authoring and management solution that provides flexible integration into clinical processes to streamline the delivery of standardised care for improved patient safety, outcomes, clinician performance and regulatory compliance. Built upon ProVation Medical’s clinician-designed technology platform, ProVation Order Sets offer automatic linking to the superior clinical decision support content of UpToDate, the resource of choice for more than 360,000 clinicians.

UpToDate covers more than 8,300 topics in 16 medical specialties and includes over 97,000 pages of text and graphics, as well as links to Medline abstracts, more than 385,000 references and a drug database. Content is continuously reviewed and updated by physician editors and authors.

In addition to integrated links to UpToDate and other trusted sources of medical evidence, ProVation Order Sets offer the flexibility to link additional clinical resources based upon client needs and preferences. Further, to help facilities achieve the highest possible degree of automation, ProVation Order Sets feature vendor-neutral mapping and export capabilities that allow for flexible integration into any facility or vendor EMR or CPOE system.

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UpToDate, part of healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has announced the addition of Allergy and Immunology to its clinical information database. Subscribers to UpToDate can now access over 300 topics specifically devoted to allergy, asthma and immunology, and a total of over 8,300 topics across 16 specialties.

Dr Bruce S. Bochner, Dr. E. Richard Stiehm and Dr. Robert A. Wood are the Editors-in-Chief of the new allergy and immunology content. These editors and 247 physician contributors worked to develop topics that cover all the major areas of allergy, asthma and immunology.

UpToDate is an evidence-based resource that provides fast, accurate clinical answers to physicians and other medical professionals, particularly at the point of care. UpToDate is available online and can also be installed on a computer or mobile device. Widely accepted by more than 400,000 clinicians in 147 countries, UpToDate seeks to improve health outcomes by providing clinicians with current, comprehensive clinical content, including treatment recommendations based on the best medical evidence. Created by more than 4,400 editors, authors and peer reviewers from leading medical institutions, UpToDate monitors more than 440 journals to ensure that the most recent information and findings are incorporated into the content.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced the addition of FDA Advisory Committee content to Pharmapendium, an online resource for preclinical, clinical and post-market drug information.

The newly added documents seek to provide preclinical and clinical drug development and regulatory affairs departments with a substantial collection of comparative scientific and regulatory data that may not be included in final FDA Approval Package documents. For the first time FDA Advisory Committee content and FDA Approval Packages can be searched simultaneously via a single source on PharmaPendium, according to Elsevier.

The expansion of searchable FDA approval coverage is projected to give pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies deeper insights into regulatory context, precedent content and the FDA drug approval process. Organised by committee, more than 140,000 pages of FDA Advisory Committee meeting minutes, rosters, supplementary documents, transcripts and PowerPoints are being added. Content from 19 CDER and CBER committees is also represented.

PharmaPendium is designed to support both scientific and business decisions within the pharma/biotech industry. The online resource seeks to provide access via a single point to searchable and trusted drug information. It covers close to 4,000 approved drugs, with integrated preclinical, clinical and post-market safety data. PharmaPendium is owned and protected by Elsevier Properties SA and used under licence.

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Business technology media and business information provider UBM TechWeb, US, has announced new subscription options from InformationWeek Analytics. InformationWeek Analytics provides business technology professionals with real-world analysis and perspective they need to run better, smarter IT organisations. More than 60,000 InformationWeek Analytics reports and briefs were downloaded by IT decision makers in 2009.

InformationWeek Analytics span technology categories from security and networking to applications and cloud computing, and can be tailored to the perspective of large-scale global enterprises or the special requirements of small and midsize corporations. The site currently houses more than 900 reports and briefs, and includes a dedicated area where technology professionals can access complete issues of InformationWeek Magazine. More than one hundred new reports featuring fresh research will become available in 2010. Members can also rate reports, which allows for deeper user interaction and engagement with the site.

Charter subscription members of InformationWeek Analytics will gain full access to the InformationWeek Analytics library of reports; peer based research and analysis to guide buying and implementing decisions; over 20 technology and IT business categories; and new reports launched every week. Charter members will also be able to access signature reports, such as the InformationWeek Salary Survey, InformationWeek 500 and the State of Security report.

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Drug decision support provider Gold Standard/Elsevier, US, has announced the availability of Clinical Pharmacology Mobile, a mobile device-optimised website offering users access to the features and functions of Clinical Pharmacology. Clinical Pharmacology is an electronic drug information and medication management reference.

Focused on supporting routine medication information needs, Clinical Pharmacology Mobile allows users to search by trade or generic drug name, indication, contraindication/precaution or adverse reaction, and to browse by monograph or classification. Clinicians can access drug monographs, multi-drug interaction reports, MedCounselor consumer medication information, drug product information, drug images and clinical calculators. In addition, users can purchase supplemental modules such as Drug IDentifier/NDC Search, IV Compatibility information and reports via Trissel’s 2 Database, Global Drug Name Directory, FormChecker hospital formulary management and OnFormulary health plan formularies.

Interested parties can experience Clinical Pharmacology Mobile at the ongoing Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual meeting in Atlanta (Elsevier’s Booth #6503/6509).

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Medical information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has launched Medi-Span Clinical, a clinical decision support (CDS) platform that delivers the functionality, interoperability and medication-related CDS necessary to advance the practice of evidence-based medicine and to achieve meaningful use of health IT.

Medi-Span Clinical was developed architecturally to easily adapt to a continuously evolving certification environment, with a flexible platform that can grow and expand to meet future criteria with minimal impact to customers.

For EMR vendors, Medi-Span Clinical delivers CCHIT-compliant medication-related clinical decision support and enables client organisations to meet multiple criteria for meaningful use, as currently defined. The platform contains a suite of Application Programming Interfaces (API) that allows health information system vendors to utilise Medi-Span content, terminology mappings and featured functionality in a manner that seamlessly integrates into new and existing EHR applications. Utilisation of APIs allows development efforts to focus on the application rather than the underlying data structure.

For clinicians, Medi-Span Clinical delivers a full slate of medication-related CDS features, including drug interactions, route contraindications and drug allergy alerts. Additionally, the Medi-Span Clinical vision features a full range of APIs, including those that support dose screening and recommended drug orders, identification of therapeutic duplications, pregnancy, lactation and age and gender conflict checking, and drug to disease screening.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced that Elsevier Clinical Decision Support (CDS) will feature solutions that directly impact the quality of care at the HIMSS 2010 event in Atlanta from March 1-3. The solutions include evidence-based clinical content and tools; interdisciplinary documentation, planning and guidelines; drug decision support; interactive skills and procedures; data mining and outcomes analysis; and e-learning.

CDS representatives will present how its solutions can help clinicians, hospitals and healthcare systems improve care quality and achieve meaningful use of healthcare information and technology.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in its recent proposed definition of meaningful use, said that the healthcare industry would be best served by ‘achieving improvements in quality, safety and efficiency, focusing on decision support for national high priority conditions, patient access to self management tools, access to comprehensive patient data, and improving population health outcomes.’ In line with this, three key Elsevier experts will discuss their perspectives on several CDS solutions at HIMSS 2010.

By following CMS’ lead and renewing its focus on care quality and efficiency, Elsevier seeks to continue its efforts to deliver evidence-based content, products and services that help medical professionals concentrate on improving care and outcomes.

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Healthcare consulting and software solutions company Clinical Architecture, US, has announced that it will introduce Symedical Recognize and new healthcare content integration services during the 2010 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) convention. The company is exhibiting (Booth: 812) at the convention which begins on March 1, 2010, at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, GA.

With the release of Symedical Recognize, Clinical Architecture is building on its successful introduction of Symedical, the company’s computer-assisted terminology mapping tool. The new Symedical service (API) leverages the tool’s powerful algorithms to provide real-time mapping of unknown source terms.

Symedical reduces the time and effort required to map one clinical terminology to another. However, there are many times when the terminologies involved are not known in advance. Symedical Recognize overcomes that challenge by mapping unknown terms as they are encountered. This new service builds the terminology map automatically over time, expediting the meaningful use of coded terms. The design of Symedical Recognize also accommodates the ability to code free text terms that are encountered as well.

In reaction to market demand, the company is also introducing new healthcare content integration services.

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Shared Health, Inc., a public/private health information exchange (HIE), has partnered with health information provider MEDai, Inc., US, part of STM publisher Elsevier, to provide a rich, interoperable, clinically relevant HIE platform to the state of Tennessee. This partnership seeks to deliver solutions and technologies that support clinical excellence and operating efficiencies. It comes at a time when stimulus funding is being leveraged to create an information exchange that helps drive meaningful use of healthcare information technology and care improvement across the healthcare continuum.

Shared Health Clinical Xchange improves the types of clinical information available to providers, helping physician practices operate more efficiently and deliver better overall patient care by bringing patient-centric information from an entire health care team to the point of care. By merging key clinical data with administrative data, Clinical Xchange takes practices ‘out of the silo’ and delivers a comprehensive clinical decision support solution. Clinical Xchange supports proactive and preventive health initiatives – disease management, wellness and early intervention.

MEDai’s predictive modeling and evidence-based medicine guideline compliance capability forms the core of actionable information within Shared Health’s clinical data-sharing platform, Clinical Xchange. This platform integrates clinical decision support and population management tools to better inform clinicians and help promote evidence-based guideline compliance and coordination of care. It is interoperable with any electronic medical record (EMR) and can create a longitudinal view of the patient drawn from a variety of sources, including the exam room, the lab, the pharmacy, the payer and the patient.

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IHS Inc., a US-based provider of energy-focused information, has announced the acquisition of Emerging Energy Research, an energy advisory firm, for $18 million. Emerging Energy seeks to help clients understand, leverage and exploit the technological, regulatory and competitive trends in the global emerging energy sector.

Emerging Energy Research is projected to draw on core competencies in market and competitive analysis, business intelligence, strategy assessment and global reach to offer clients advisory services, consulting services and market studies about emerging technologies in global energy markets. These include wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, ocean energy, nuclear, carbon capture and storage and hydrogen. The company is dedicated to tracking market segments on the cusp of change in the energy industry – those that are the fastest growing, the fastest changing and most impacted by technology advances, regulatory trends, market trends and industry restructuring.

According to the company, Emerging Energy delivers research-based advice, support and analysis from its international team of research experts, industry analysts and strategy consultants to executives and key decision-makers. Its customers span three core market segments: utilities, power developers/independent power producers and manufacturing (clean technology supply chain).

The acquisition is claimed to be an important fit at the intersection of two important domains for IHS - energy and environment. The company’s other acquisitions include EnvironMax, Dolphin Software and Environmental Software Providers in 2007 and 2008, and Environmental Support Solutions in 2009.

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Medical information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced that UpToDate has been selected as a point-of-care reference tool by Helsebiblioteket (The Norwegian Electronic Health Library). Helsebiblioteket provides health personnel with free online access to useful and trustworthy knowledge resources - journals, databases, summarised evidence, guidelines and other tools - in order to help raise the quality of health services in Norway.

UpToDate is an evidence-based resource that provides fast, accurate clinical answers to physicians and other medical professionals, particularly at the point of care. Used by over 360,000 clinicians worldwide, UpToDate's content includes treatment recommendations based on the best medical evidence. Created by more than 4,000 editors, authors and peer reviewers from leading medical institutions, the resource monitors over 430 journals, guidelines published by major and international societies, and other resources to ensure that the most recent findings are incorporated into the content.

UpToDate has also announced a partnership with the Global Health Delivery Project to provide subscriptions to clinicians working with underserved populations outside the US. Most recently this has included making complimentary subscriptions available to clinicians providing care in Haiti. UpToDate has also worked with Partners in Health to evaluate the utility of the programme in public hospitals in Rwanda, Malawi and South Africa.

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Publishing services company Clarke Publishing Group, US, has announced a new service line at the Association of American Publisher's 2010 Professional Scholarly Publishing Annual Conference. The iConsult service line is aimed at publishers and other organisations active in professional and scholarly publishing. It is designed to provide inexpensive, flexible and convenient services that help publishers remain informed and react quickly to market developments.

There are two iConsult services presently available: Executive Briefings and Pocket Advisor. Executive Briefings is designed as an aide to strategic and tactical decision-making at the senior level. The service includes an in-person briefing from Clarke Publishing Group principal Michael Clarke on one of a number of key topics, including the impact of mobile technologies, social media, and semantic technologies on professional and scholarly publishing. Additionally, several overview presentations are available, including ‘Digital Opportunities for Publishers’ and ‘Emerging Trends in Professional and Scholarly Publishing.’ Clarke Publishing Group will customise each presentation, ensuring that it directly supports the needs and challenges of each client.

Pocket Advisor is designed to provide support on emerging issues, new challenges and leading trends. For a fixed annual fee, clients can expect to rely on Clarke Publishing Group for rapid feedback, benchmarking, research, and advice to guide decision-making.

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Healthcare publisher Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), part of Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has announced a partnership with Laerdal Medical. Under the deal, Lippincott’s print and online nursing content will be integrated with Laerdal’s state-of-the-art simulators and superior simulation programmes.

Practicing nurses and nursing students will now gain access to real-world clinical simulation packages that will advance their technical skills and critical thinking abilities. The Lippincott/Laerdal simulators will enable nursing students to experience real-world scenarios that correspond to their nursing courses, strengthen skills, and build critical thinking competencies. Practicing nurses will reinforce their knowledge base with clinical scenarios that correspond with their specialty.

The first product will be a Medical-Surgical Nursing simulation package that provides clinical scenarios using web-based content from the 12th edition of Brunner & Suddarth’s Textbook of Medical–Surgical Nursing; Lippincott’s Nursing Advisor, an online reference program with more than 2100 evidence-based, quick access entries on diseases, diagnostic tests, drugs, treatments, and nursing care plans; and Lippincott’s Procedures and Skills, an online program with more than 900 step-by-step, evidence-based nursing procedures and skills and over 1200 full colour images and videos.

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Information services provider Thomson Reuters, US, has announced that Micromedex 2.0, the new web-based version of its market-leading clinical information system, is now available to current and new customers. Micromedex 2.0 gives clinicians direct web and mobile access to Micromedex content through a new user interface that combines enhanced search with user-based interface design to simplify and enhance the way they use referential information.

Pharmacists, nurses, and physicians in more than 3,500 hospitals in 83 countries use Micromedex for evidence-based information on drugs, disease management, toxicology, neonatal dosing, and alternative medicines as well as patient education material. Micromedex 2.0 was designed to help clinicians make better use of this wealth of information. New features include an interface based on clinician workflow patterns, enhanced search capabilities, special tabs for high-usage tools, and compatibility with iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry smartphones, and other mobile devices.

New search functionality allows for multi-term search, predictive text, synonyms and suggestions for alternate spellings. Highly used features — such as dosing calculators, Trissel’s 2 IV compatibility, drug identification, and drug interaction checking — have been pulled into separate tabs so they can be accessed and used quickly. Micromedex 2.0 also simplifies how clinicians see results. The new 360-degree view of results provides a complete picture of all available information about a drug or condition on a single screen — including drug summaries, images, consults, comparative efficacy information, labeled and off-label indications, treatment options, and more.

The Micromedex 2.0 is available at no additional charge for existing Micromedex customers.

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Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced that West Georgia Health System (WGHS) has selected ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, to automate the creation, deployment and maintenance of order sets solutions at West Georgia Medical Center. The 276-bed West Georgia Medical Center has been serving the citizens of LaGrange and Troup counties for more than 60 years and is one of only 211 designated rural referral centers in the nation.

ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, is an easily customisable order set authoring and management solution that provides flexible integration into clinical processes to streamline the delivery of standardised care for improved patient safety, outcomes, clinician performance and regulatory compliance. Built upon ProVation Medical’s clinician-designed technology platform, ProVation Order Sets offer automatic linking to the superior clinical decision support content of UpToDate, the resource of choice for more than 360,000 clinicians.

UpToDate covers more than 7,700 topics in 15 medical specialties and includes more than 80,000 pages of text and graphics, as well as links to Medline abstracts, more than 260,000 references and a drug database. Content is continuously reviewed and updated by physician editors and authors.

In addition to integrated links to UpToDate and other trusted sources of medical evidence, ProVation Order Sets offer the flexibility to link additional clinical resources based upon client needs and preferences. Further, to help facilities achieve the highest possible degree of automation, ProVation Order Sets feature vendor-neutral mapping and export capabilities that allow for flexible integration into any facility or vendor EMR or CPOE system.

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Mobile medical references provider Skyscape, US, has launched a mobile clinical decision application on the Google Android operating system. Skyscape’s medical resources are now available on most smart phone devices, allowing medical professionals to easily download the latest medical information.

The technology produced by Skyscape gives medical practitioners access to up-to-date clinical information on their mobile devices, allowing them to spend more time treating patients and less time rummaging through volumes of research. The application also allows them to treat patients in a variety of settings and locations, without being tied to a computer. With the Android operating system, all of the medical information needed to quickly and accurately diagnose and treat a patient is available on the same mobile device.

With the expansion of the Skyscape system onto the Android operating system, Skyscape claims to have become the first mobile clinical decision support provider to offer its application on all major mobile carriers. In addition to their current iPhone enabled application, the Skyscape programme will now be available on a number of Android OS enabled phones, including the HTC Touch, the Zii Trinity, Samsung Behold, G2, G3, G4, MyTouch, and DROID.

Widespread access to up-to-the-minute medical information is transforming the way physicians are able to treat patients around the globe. Wireless handheld devices such as Blackberry, iPhone and PDA are being projected as an ideal platform for mobile learning and reference, particularly in medical education and practice. Earlier last month, US-based healthcare knowledge management solutions provider Unbound Medicine announced the launch of Evidence Central, an integrated evidence-based solution, with content from its partner, Wiley-Blackwell, the STM and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Evidence Central supports effective medical practice through delivery of the latest research and guidelines to mobile devices and the web.

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STM and scholarly publisher Wiley-Blackwell, US, has announced that The Cochrane Collaboration will be renewing its license with India. Representatives of Wiley-Blackwell and the Indian Council of Medical Research will meet on January 27, 2010, to formalise the modalities of this arrangement.

This national license will enable about 60 million internet users gain access to The Cochrane Library’s internationally renowned collection of healthcare databases. This includes gold-standard Cochrane Systematic Reviews, which help clinicians and consumers make decisions about what treatments are best for their patients.

The Cochrane Library contains healthcare information, including Systematic Reviews from The Cochrane Collaboration. These Reviews bring together research on the effects of healthcare and are considered the gold standard for determining the relative effectiveness of different interventions.

The Cochrane Collaboration is a UK registered international charity and claims to be the world's leading producer of systematic Reviews. It has been demonstrated that Cochrane Systematic Reviews are of comparable or better quality and are updated more often than the Reviews published in print journals.

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Information services provider Thomson Reuters, US, has announced the acquisition of Discovery Logic, Inc, a provider of customisable analytics and decision support solutions for scientific research. Effective immediately, the company is part of the Healthcare & Science business of Thomson Reuters. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The acquisition of Discovery Logic is expected to enhance current research analytics offerings and provide increased decision support and workflow solutions to academic, government, non-profit and commercial professionals. Key assets and benefits which Discovery Logic will bring to Healthcare & Science's Scientific & Scholarly Research group include ScienceWire, a customisable and proprietary software and database platform; complementary capabilities in analytics, data management and value-added services; experienced management team; and a successful track record of deploying decision support systems.

Discovery Logic is a provider of systems, data and analytics for real-time portfolio management, decision support, outcomes tracking and information visualisation. The company provides a unique software, data and analytics for relating people, organisations, ideas, grants, inventions, patents, publications and products worldwide.

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Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO), US, has released a Spanish-language full text, point-of-care tool, Enfermería Al Día, for nurses and other healthcare professionals. Enfermería Al Día provides Spanish-speaking nurses, nurse administrators, nursing students, nurse faculty, and hospital librarians worldwide with access to relevant evidence-based clinical information resources at the point-of-care. Enfermería Al Día enables users to improve the consistency of care and ensure that the latest guidelines and medical alerts are known by the entire nursing staff.

Enfermería Al Día offers the best available and most recent clinical evidence from thousands of full text documents covering areas such as conditions & diseases, patient education resources and the latest medical news. This point-of-care tool includes more than 2,200 evidence-based care sheets; evidence-based summaries on key topics incorporating the best available evidence through rigorous systematic surveillance and quick lessons; and clinically-organised nursing overviews that are designed to map the nursing work flow. More than 3,000 Spanish education patient education handouts (in Spanish & English) are also available to educate patients on their conditions.

This database adds to EBSCO’s collection of Spanish resources for the medical market. Enfermería Al Día also allows for integrated searching of a user’s CINAHL and MEDLINE making it a valuable point-of-care resource for practicing nurses.

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Healthcare knowledge management solutions provider Unbound Medicine, US, has announced the launch of Evidence Central, an integrated evidence-based solution, with content from its partner, Wiley-Blackwell, the STM and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc, US. Evidence Central supports effective medical practice through delivery of the latest research and guidelines to mobile devices and the web.

Evidence Central is designed to answer evidence-based questions and keep clinicians up to date by delivering the latest scientific research and literature on a daily basis. It includes up-to-date review abstracts of therapeutic interventions in Cochrane Abstracts, clinical guidelines and supporting summaries in Evidence-Based Medicine Guidelines, daily relevant evidence reviews in EE+ POEMs (Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters from Essential Evidence Plus), and literature citations, abstracts, and links to full text in MEDLINE Journals. Powered by the Unbound Platform, this clinically-useful information is easily accessible on the web or mobile device platforms including iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, and Palm.

Clinicians can search Cochrane Abstracts summaries detailing the validity of research findings on a medical topic, then use Cross Links to connect to clinical guidelines and supporting information, including images and videos. Unbound Medicine’s MEDLINE Journals feature connects these entries to journal abstracts and provides alerts for new journal articles as they are published. Daily EE+ POEMs are organised for easy application in practice and are available in an archive for future reference.

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International STM and scholarly publisher Wiley-Blackwell, US, has announced the launch of Essential Evidence, a new product added to its online, evidence-based content resource Essential Evidence Plus. Synthesised from timely and late-breaking clinical evidence derived from the world's most respected medical authorities, this topic-oriented clinical resource tool is projected to help clinicians to more effectively make diagnoses, chart treatment plans, and determine prognoses.

Essential Evidence is available exclusively with a subscription to Essential Evidence Plus, and is accessible through the web or via handheld computer (Pocket PC or Palm OS). The product features about 700 structured medical topics at launch with approximately 100 more in development. All topics are highly integrated and hyperlinked to content and tools including Cochrane Reviews, literature summaries (Daily POEMs), decision support tools, evidence-based guidelines, and interactive diagnostic test calculators.

Topics covered in Essential Evidence are written by leading researchers and peer-reviewed by medical experts. These experts evaluate clinical findings in the medical literature and summarise this information to provide clinicians with evidence-based data essential to making informed point-of-care decisions. Essential Evidence facilitates quick retrieval of the latest evidence that guides patient care decisions and includes a ‘Bottom Line’ feature highlighting the most important findings in each section.

All content includes a ‘strength of evidence’ rating for each recommendation that helps practitioners know which recommendations are most likely to improve health outcomes. Summary tables for at-a-glance information, algorithms for problem solving, and an extensive image library are also included to optimise patient care.

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Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO), US, has announced an agreement with Zynx Health, a subsidiary of Hearst Corporation, US. Institutions currently using point-of-care resources from EBSCO and Zynx Health are expected to benefit from this new deal. The agreement gives healthcare providers integrated access to their evidence-based resources, resulting in quicker retrieval of relevant and current information and improved quality care. This expanded integration option offers consolidated access to current and consistent evidence-based information to all users in the clinical workflow.

In April 2009 an agreement was signed allowing mutual customers to access DynaMed clinical summaries via Zynx Health evidence pages. This new expanded agreement provides customers of ZynxOrder, ZynxEvidence and ZynxCare with direct links to their EBSCO point-of-care resources, providing the convenience of a single point of entry to multiple evidence-based resources for a clinical topic. The additional evidence resources available through Zynx Health evidence pages include EBSCO’s DynaMed, Nursing Reference Center, Rehabilitation Reference Center and Patient Education Reference Center.

The integration of Zynx Health and EBSCO resources maximises the impact of referential content by consolidating access to multiple evidence sources, providing relevant information to all users in the clinical workflow, including doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced a new online resource centre for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) updates and initiatives, accessible via Elsevier’s ClinicalDecisionSupport.com site, or by going to www.clinicaldecisionsupport.com/ARRA. The resource centre and the accompanying blog seek to provide users with updates on ARRA progress and actions, as well as commentary on emerging trends and issues from Elsevier executives Dr. Jonathan Teich, Michelle Troseth and Swati Abbott.

Meaningful clinical decision support (CDS) is projected as a key tenet of healthcare reform and ARRA goals for quality improvement. Designed to assist physicians and other care providers with decisions at the point-of-care, CDS systems assimilate data on a variety of conditions and diagnoses and can flag potential issues. These include unsafe medication interactions that may end up being harmful to patients as well as costly to the entire healthcare system.

Elsevier has been operating in the CDS industry for many years now. Its Consult Suite (i.e., First Consult, MD Consult, Nursing Consult) and Gold Standard/Elsevier drug information products make knowledge accessible via the EHR. The aim is to help physicians, nurses and pharmacists make better clinical decisions within the workflow and at the point of care. Elsevier’s CPM Resource Center (CPMRC) provides a framework including integrated evidence-based interdisciplinary content and transformational services at the point of care. In addition, through MEDai, Elsevier seeks to deliver a patient-specific, real-time clinical surveillance solution driven by predictive analytics to identify a patient’s risk for re-admission and hospital-acquired infection while the patient is still in the hospital.

Elsevier’s blog is launching with introductory postings from Troseth, Executive Vice President and Chief Professional Practice Officer, CPMRC, and Abbott, President of MEDai. Troseth’s first blog post discusses the ‘meaningful use’ matrix and addresses considerations for healthcare leaders and organisations today, while Abbott’s entry highlights common ailments and some possible solutions for the healthcare system, especially with regard to technology.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced that the physician-members of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, will receive free access to MD Consult (www.mdconsult.com), its electronic clinical decision support (CDS) tool. The move is part of Elsevier’s ‘All You Need to Make a Difference’ campaign. MSF had bagged the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

Elsevier will donate a free subscription to MSF for each annual individual MD Consult subscription purchased between November 16 and December 18, 2009. Based on its projections, Elsevier estimates that the month-long campaign could provide 400 subscriptions to MSF's volunteer physicians. Based on average monthly sales, Elsevier estimates that the licenses donated to MSF's volunteer physicians could be worth as much as $140,000.

MD Consult is expected to help volunteer physicians diagnose and treat conditions associated with armed conflict, malnutrition, natural disasters and lack of access to care, and other epidemics. With a world population of close to seven billion people, some 32.9 million have HIV/AIDS, 13.7 million have tuberculosis and 247 million have malaria, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's Global Health Facts.

MSF aid workers operate programmes in more than 60 countries. Elsevier, which has 7,000 employees working in more than 70 offices worldwide, has various partnerships with global science and health communities across the word. According to Elsevier estimates, clinicians in more than 139 countries use its CDS tools.

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Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced that Tufts Medical Center has selected ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, to automate the creation, maintenance and system-wide deployment of evidence-based order sets. Tufts Medical Center, a 451-bed academic medical center, will also serve as a reference site for the electronic order set solution.

ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, is an easily customisable order set authoring and management solution that provides flexible integration into clinical processes to streamline the delivery of standardised care for improved patient safety, outcomes, clinician performance and regulatory compliance. Built upon ProVation Medical’s clinician-designed technology platform, ProVation Order Sets offer automatic linking to the clinical decision support content of UpToDate, the resource of choice for more than 360,000 physicians.

UpToDate covers more than 7,700 topics in 14 medical specialties and includes more than 80,000 pages of text and graphics, as well as links to Medline abstracts, more than 260,000 references and a drug database. Content is continuously reviewed and updated by physician editors and authors. In addition to integrated links to UpToDate and other trusted sources of medical evidence, ProVation Order Sets offer the flexibility to link additional clinical resources based upon client needs and preferences. Further, to help facilities achieve the highest possible degree of automation, ProVation Order Sets feature vendor-neutral mapping and export capabilities that allow for flexible integration into any facility or vendor EMR or CPOE system.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced the launch of MD Consult Mobile. Optimised for iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphone devices, MD Consult Mobile allows clinicians to consult the same MD Consult content available from a laptop or desktop computer. Physicians of any specialty will now be able to access an entire library of quality medical content on their mobile devices.

MD Consult Mobile provides a new interface that is optimised for a small screen, making an extensive collection of books, journal articles, Clinics, and guidelines easily accessed and read from a mobile device’s web browser. MD Consult Mobile users can browse directly to content via Quick Reference links that cover a growing list of medical topics with pre-organised resources; search books, Clinics, journals/MEDLINE, and practice guidelines; view full-text chapters, journal articles and images of all searchable content; and email content links, to themselves for later review, or to colleagues. The service is available at no additional charge to individual subscribers, as well as end-users at institutions with site license subscriptions.

MD Consult brings leading medical resources together into one integrated online reference tool to help physicians efficiently find answers to pressing clinical questions and make better treatment decisions. A service of Elsevier, it combines leading medical reference books, medical journals, and The Clinics of North America with patient education handouts, drug information, medical news, and more.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced that Trinity Health, the fourth largest Catholic health system in the US with 44 hospitals across eight states, will install seven of Elsevier’s online clinical decision support (CDS) solutions. With this initiative, Trinity Health seeks to meet the evolving needs of its thousands of physicians, nurses, pharmacists and allied health professionals for evidence-based clinical content.

Elsevier’s comprehensive, interdisciplinary and integrated suite of CDS solutions selected by Trinity Health includes Clinical Pharmacology, which delivers expert drug information; ToxED 2.0, which facilitates treatment of drug overdose emergencies; First Consult, which provides evidence-based answers at the point of care; MD Consult, which brings leading medical resources together in a single online service; Mosby’s Nursing Consult, which helps nurses find answers to pressing clinical questions; Mosby’s Nursing Skills, which presents nearly 1,000 interactive skills adapted from nursing reference texts; and Mosby’s Index, the nursing and allied health journal abstracts and indexing database. These solutions will be installed in numerous critical access facilities, long term care and ambulatory facilities in California, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan and Ohio.

Elsevier hopes that access to this high-level evidence-based content will better position Trinity Health’s diverse care providers to make informed decisions, coordinate care, engage patients and families and enhance quality, safety and efficiency.

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Healthcare information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced that Cortland Regional Medical Center (CRMC) has selected ProVation Order Sets, an order set authoring and management solution powered by WK Health’s UpToDate Decision Support. CRMC will use ProVation to automate the creation, maintenance and system-wide deployment of evidence-based order sets.

ProVation Order Sets is claimed to be easily customisable, providing flexible integration into clinical processes to streamline the delivery of standardised care for improved patient safety, outcomes, clinician performance and regulatory compliance. It offers automatic linking to the clinical decision support content of UpToDate – a resource used by an estimated 360,000 physicians.

UpToDate covers more than 7,700 topics in 14 medical specialties and includes more than 80,000 pages of text and graphics, as well as links to Medline abstracts, more than 260,000 references and a drug database. Content is continuously reviewed and updated by physician editors and authors, according to WK Health.

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Medical information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has announced that SwedishAmerican Health System has selected ProVation Order Sets as the electronic order set solution for its subsidiary, SwedishAmerican Hospital. Nationally recognised for quality and clinical excellence, SwedishAmerican Hospital will use ProVation Order Sets’ innovative technology, workflow tools and UpToDate clinical content and decision support to automate the creation, maintenance and deployment of evidence-based order sets.

ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, is an easily customisable order set authoring and management solution that provides flexible integration into clinical processes to streamline the delivery of standardised care for improved patient safety, outcomes, clinician performance and regulatory compliance. Built upon ProVation Medical’s clinician designed technology platform, ProVation Order Sets offer automatic linking to the clinical decision support content of UpToDate, the resource of choice for more than 360,000 physicians.

UpToDate covers more than 7,700 topics in 14 medical specialties and includes more than 80,000 pages of text and graphics, as well as links to Medline abstracts, more than 260,000 references and a drug database. Content is continuously reviewed and updated by physician editors and authors.

In addition to integrated links to UpToDate and other trusted sources of medical evidence, ProVation Order Sets offer the flexibility to link additional clinical resources based upon client needs and preferences. Further, to help facilities achieve the highest possible degree of automation, ProVation Order Sets feature vendor-neutral mapping and export capabilities that allow for flexible integration into any facility or vendor EMR or CPOE system.

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Information services provider Thomson Reuters, US, has announced that Halifax Regional Medical Center has signed a multi-year agreement to use Thomson Reuters Micromedex solutions as its source for evidence-based clinical reference information. Halifax Regional Medical Center is a 206-bed acute-care hospital in Roanoke Rapids, in rural North Carolina.

The Micromedex solutions include evidence-based information on drugs and drug interactions, disease management, toxicology, alternative medicine, and intravenous drug compatibility, as well as patient education resources. By choosing an integrated source for all of its clinical reference needs, Halifax Regional will limit resources required to train staff and eliminate the need to support disparate clinical reference systems.

Micromedex content will provide the hospital with the evidence needed to recommend treatment alternatives while providing options for reducing costs.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced that it will showcase the new features it is rolling out for its BrainNavigator research tool at the Society for Neuroscience’s Neuroscience 2009 event in Chicago. Recently adopted by the US’ National Institutes of Health (NIH), BrainNavigator is an online, interactive, 3D software tool that maps images of brain anatomy. It seeks to help neuroscience researchers to save time and improve the quality of their daily research.

BrainNavigator helps locate the position of structures within the brain, similar to a GPS system, making visualisation and communication about scientific findings about the brain easier. After unveiling the prototype version at the Society for Neuroscience’s Neuroscience 2008 tradeshow last November, the version including mouse and rat brains is now available at www.brainnav.com.

The product was developed in collaboration with the Allen Institute for Brain Science and under the editorship of Prof. George Paxinos, Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute, Sydney and Charles Watson, Professor of Health Sciences, Curtin University, Perth and Senior Professorial Research Fellow Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute, Sydney. Offering both free and subscription-based content, it is used by NIH and other research institutions. It seeks to offer an easy-to-use online system that allows the institutions to browse, compare and label high-resolution material as well as to create virtual sections from sophisticated 3D models of the brain. Users can also annotate atlas drawings and share their annotations with colleagues.

New features include the ability to export and print 2D and 3D images; ‘Injection Planner’ - a feature that allows users to select a point for injection of an electrode or pharmacological substances via a syringe, and visualise the path for the injection in the 3D model of the brain; and an image overlay function which will allow users to place the atlas drawing over the stained image.

BrainNavigator will be showcased at Elsevier’s booth (#112) at Neuroscience 2009, and hourly demonstrations will be given. Free trials of the product, including new features, will be available beginning November 13, 2009.

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Clinical informatics company Humedica, US, and Anceta, the health care informatics subsidiary of the American Medical Group Association (AMGA), have announced a long-term partnership. Anceta has selected Humedica to be its exclusive partner in the development of its nationwide collaborative data warehouse and robust clinical analytics platform. Humedica and Anceta will showcase some early results from this membership-driven initiative at the ongoing AMGA’s Institute for Quality Leadership (IQL) Annual Conference in San Francisco. The IQL is sponsored by AMGA to improve the quality of care delivered in the US healthcare system through the advancement of knowledge and the education of health care professionals.

Humedica’s next-generation clinical informatics platform is uniquely designed to handle the specific needs of Anceta participants. The Humedica platform integrates clinical, claims, financial and other data to generate a complete and longitudinal view of Anceta members’ patient populations. Additionally, Humedica applies disease-specific clinical classifications and advanced analytics to define appropriate patient cohorts, treatment pathways, outcomes and associated costs, all within a state-of-the-art, HIPAA-compliant, and highly secure environment. Humedica’s timely longitudinal clinical data provides unparalleled clarity into how patient populations are treated, which treatments and procedures are prescribed, and most importantly, the quality, efficacy, and cost of this care.

The Anceta collaborative facilitates comparative analytics and benchmarking through the aggregation of data from participating medical groups into a single standard clinical ontology. Humedica and Anceta help member organisations develop, compare, and share best practices and performance improvement strategies through their unique collaborative programmes.

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Drug and clinical information solutions developer Informed Decisions, LLC, an Elsevier company, has announced that it is providing information about its EMPOWERx e-prescribing solution via the American Medical Association's (AMA) new ePrescribing Learning Center. The new online platform provides physicians with the information and tools they need to make informed decisions about electronic prescribing.

The learning center includes a variety of tools and resources to help physicians. This includes calculators to estimate time savings and eligibility for incentive payments and planning tools to help determine practice readiness for and ease implementation of new technologies.

Currently thousands of physicians have deployed EMPOWERx and hundreds have realised actual savings and improved efficiencies within their practice. The solution grants access to integrated drug information, drug-drug interaction screenings, real-time patient medication histories, up-to-date formulary information and more. Physicians can have point-of-care access to this clinical drug reference, e-prescribing programme and patient care system via wireless and cellular connectivity, as well as the online secure EMPOWERx website.

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Hazelden, a nonprofit organisation, and the Dartmouth Psychiatric Research Center (PRC) have announced a partnership to develop a variety of resources for the mental health and addiction treatment industries. These resources, including curricula, books, multimedia tools, and staff-development trainings, will be published under a new ‘Dartmouth PRC–Hazelden’ imprint.

This collaboration between Hazelden and the Dartmouth PRC is the result of the success of a project between Hazelden and Dartmouth Medical School - the 2008 publication of the Co-occurring Disorders Program, the first comprehensive, evidence-based programme for the treatment of non-severe co-occurring disorders. This programme has been adopted by several organisations, including the U.S. Navy and the Adult Mental Health Division of the Minnesota Department of Human Services.

The new joint venture between Hazelden and the Dartmouth PRC will launch with the fall 2009 release of A Guide for Living with PTSD: Perspectives for Professionals and Their Clients, a video on the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Future products will compose a continuum of evidence-based resources for working with those who have a mental health disorder or co-occurring addiction and mental health disorders, including an updated, expanded, and serviceable version of the Integrated Dual Disorder Treatment program, which will feature a new relapse prevention component. These products and trainings will be designed to serve a broad range of professionals, including counselors, social workers, nurses and psychiatrists who work in mental health agencies, the military, treatment centers, corrections departments, state governments, and industry associations.

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Symyx Technologies, Inc., a US-based provider of technologies for R&D, has announced a new release of the Symyx Isentris decision support system. Isentris 3.2 enables scientists to explore, compare and report on information spanning multiple experiments captured in electronic lab notebooks, the Symyx Lab Execution and Analysis (LEA) software suite, laboratory information management systems and other information management systems.

Symyx Isentris is projected as a cross-experiment data access, analysis and reporting tool for any LIMS system - driving better informed decisions in scientific experiments and studies. The latest version supports the ongoing collaboration between Symyx and Thermo Fisher Scientific aimed at integrating Symyx Notebook and Symyx Isentris software with Thermo Scientific’s industry-leading LIMS including Watson LIMS used in DMPK/bioanalytical research.

Isentris 3.2 seeks to significantly extend the current analysis and reporting capabilities of Symyx LEA software. It enables LEA researchers to easily aggregate data from multiple information sources in a single view and to report on chemical structures, images, chromatograms, spectra and XY datasets, all within the Microsoft Excel environment.

With the Isentris software developer kit, R&D organisations can extend existing reporting functionality with cross-experiment analysis and reporting, thereby combining additional information sources into analyses and reports on an experiment-by-experiment or study-by-study basis. Scientists can rapidly validate findings by comparing experimental results. They can improve the design of future experiments through comparisons with past experiments and expect to make better decisions by combining information from disparate sources.

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Custom health communications company StayWell Custom Communications (SCC), a division of MediMedia USA, has announced an exclusive strategic alliance with Self Care Decisions, LLC, a provider of decision-support care guides for consumers via the Internet and mobile applications.

Through this strategic alliance, StayWell Custom Communications will be offering a range of online applications for health care providers and payor organisations designed to guide consumers to the appropriate response to common health care issues. These tools will be offered by SCC in addition to the already impressive collection of solutions currently being used by its hundreds of health care clients. The Self Care Decisions tools, which can be custom branded to the sponsoring client organisation, provide people with decision support and care advice for common health symptoms and minor injuries via the Internet and their handheld devices.

The applications include HouseCalls Symptom Checker, an online decision support and care advice tool; and SymptomMD, an iPhone/iTouch application that puts symptom decision support in a consumer's pocket. The tools provide valuable information to consumers to help them self-manage their own health care, reduce unnecessary office visits, save them time, worry, calls to physicians, and avoid after-hour trips to urgent care facilities.

Clients who use these online tools have the ability to package and brand each solution to their own organisation to make it a totally custom offering. The iPhone/iTouch application can even be programmed to guide consumers to the sponsoring organisation's selected providers for care.

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Information service company EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO), Netherlands, has developed an open source software development kit (SDK) for developing clients and servers for the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI). The SDK will assist content providers in implementing SUSHI – a key requirement for being compliant with Release 3 of the COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) Code of Practice for Journals and Databases.

The SDK includes .Net classes that will facilitate working with COUNTER 3.0 data and SUSHI 1.6 services. Whether the intended solution is a SUSHI client or server, these classes will provide the groundwork to allow developers to focus on the logic rather than implementing the standard. The SDK, which contains documentation, source code, a sample client, and a sample server can be found at http://code.google.com/p/ebscosushisdk/.

SUSHI will be an integral part of EBSCO’s Usage Consolidation module, a new service that is being added to ERM Essentials, the company’s e-resource management system.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced that Dallas-based CHRISTUS Health will install five of Elsevier’s online clinical decision support (CDS) solutions to meet the diverse and evolving clinical decision support needs of its physicians, nurses and pharmacists.

CHRISTUS opted for Elsevier’s comprehensive, interdisciplinary and integrated suite of CDS solutions for pharmacy, medicine and nursing. Among the selected solutions are Clinical Pharmacology, which delivers expert drug information; ToxED 2.0, which facilitates treatment of drug overdose emergencies; First Consult, which provides evidence-based answers for the point of care; MD Consult, which brings leading medical resources together in a single online service; and Mosby’s Nursing Consult, which helps nurses find answers to pressing clinical questions.

Elsevier CDS solutions will be installed in 25 Texas hospitals within CHRISTUS Health, which is composed of more than 40 hospitals, inpatient and long-term care facilities, as well as multiple clinics, physician offices and healthcare services. Other factors influencing CHRISTUS’ decision to adopt multiple Elsevier solutions included its need to consolidate resources, save on costs, integrate solutions and allow physicians, nurses and pharmacists to navigate effortlessly between CDS products.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced the availability of a new online tool at the Mosby’s Nursing Consult website. The CMS Never Events section is designed to help nurses prevent the 10 ‘Never Events’ identified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in an October 2008 fact sheet. It seeks to help nurses to prevent so-called Never Events or Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) in the quest to improve care quality and maximise hospital reimbursement.

The launch is in response to CMS’ 2008 decision that it would no longer pay for adverse events that could be prevented through the application of specific evidence-based protocols. In addition, CMS does not permit patients to be billed for the cost of these events.

To create CMS Never Events, Elsevier researchers matched each Never Event/HAC with appropriate articles, reports, monographs and studies. The tool covers CMS’ initial list of 10 HACs. This includes foreign objects retained after surgery, air embolism, blood incompatibility, stage III and IV pressure ulcers, falls and trauma, manifestations of poor glycemic control, catheter-associated urinary tract infect ion, vascular catheter associated infection, surgical site infection and deep vein thrombosis /pulmonary embolism.

Nurses who access CMS Never Events to prevent an HAC can review a definition, evidence-based nursing content, books, journals, guidelines, patient education, images and news. Nursing Consult also includes decision-making guidance on six conditions now under review by CMS for inclusion on the HAC list. Among them are delirium, ventilator-associated pneumonia, staphylococcus aureus septicemia, clostridium difficile-associated disease, Legionnaire’s disease and iatrogenic pneumothorax.

Mosby’s suite of online tools, including Mosby’s Nursing Consult with CMS Never Events, Mosby’s Nursing Skills and Mosby’s Index, is used by more than 500 hospitals across the US. CMS Never Events is a component of a suite of professional nursing tools from Elsevier. In addition to Nursing Consult, the suite includes Nursing Skills, which offers training in nearly 1,000 nursing skills and procedures, and Mosby’s Index, a database of close to 3,000 nursing resources.

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Medical information provider Wolters Kluwer Health (WK Health), US, has unveiled ProVation Care Plans, an innovative software solution that arms nurses, pharmacists, therapists and other caregivers with the actionable evidence they need to effectively enhance practice, improve patient safety and demonstrate compliance with credentialing and regulatory standards. The new offering, which will deliver more than 200 clinical care plans, provides nursing interventions; embedded links to current evidence, performance, measures and quality indicators; vendor-neutral EMR and clinical information system integration; and clinical terms based on standard medical vocabularies.

ProVation Care Plans were built by a team of expert clinicians, in partnership with the experts at Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), an international publisher of nursing information. ProVation Care Plans enable hospitals to make the most informed decisions through point of care access to disease and symptom information, and supporting evidence from Wolters Kluwer Health sources like UpToDate, which reduces the risk for error and liability, helps to establish clinical consensus on standards of care, and improves patient care and safety. Through ProVation Care Plans, clinicians and facilities also have one-click access to the Ovid journals to which they subscribe.

Interdisciplinary care teams can use ProVation Care Plans to customise, modify and maintain care plans to meet the needs of the facility or different patient populations; create educational programmes, procedures and guidelines based on recent evidence; and comply with credentialing and standards for Joint Commission and other regulatory bodies.

ProVation Care Plans are available as a standalone product or in conjunction with ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support, the innovative order set development solution that combines ProVation Medical’s award-winning technology platform with UpToDate’s superior clinical decision support content. ProVation Order Sets streamline the delivery of standardized care for improved patient safety, outcomes, clinician performance and regulatory compliance.

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Gold Standard/Elsevier, publisher of medication management solutions, has announced the launch of three MedCounselor consumer drug information modules for pharmacies and health information websites. MedCounselor seeks to educate consumers on how to take medications safely, assist in identifying unknown tablets or capsules, and check for drug interactions. The modules are claimed to be indispensable in helping to increase consumer compliance to their drug regimens and avoid costly and sometimes deadly medication errors.

Developed from Gold Standard/Elsevier's drug information and medication management content for health professionals, MedCounselor looks to provide evidence-based, easily understandable consumer medication information. It also offers a new ‘Toolkit’ which enables better integration with the client’s existing content - clients can integrate searching and/or link to drug information directly from their own websites/applications.

Gold Standard/Elsevier will demonstrate these new MedCounselor modules at the NACDS Pharmacy & Technology Conference, August 8-11, 2009, in Boston, Booth #1166.

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Business information company Thomson Reuters, US, and Discovery Logic, Inc. have announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has chosen Web of Science data to power the NIH electronic Scientific Portfolio Assistant (eSPA). Discovery Logic is a leading provider of systems, data and analytics for real-time portfolio management, decision support, outcomes tracking, and information visualisation.

eSPA is an information technology system designed to assist NIH grants management officials in creating grant portfolios and tracking research outputs and outcomes, including publications and citations. As the prime contractor on this award, Discovery Logic will link Web of Science data to NIH grants, clinical trials, publications, invention reports, patents and other scientific data sources by providing custom software development services, database services and data analytic services.

Web of Science is the world’s largest citation database, providing researchers, administrators, faculty and students access to more than 11,000 actively covered, high impact journals and 110,000 conference proceedings, totaling 45 million documents and more than 1 billion cited references.

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E-Resource Access and Management Services (ERAMS) provider Serials Solutions, US, has announced enhanced reporting for the Serials Solutions 360 Counter e-resource assessment service that allows libraries to better report on cost-per-use and showcase collection development decisions. 360 Counter reports now feature an improved user interface and functionality that allows librarians to build and save reports, share custom reports with colleagues, and create visually dynamic and interactive dashboards.

Serials Solutions 360 Counter reporting enhancements include new user interface with improved icons and simplified navigation, functionality for building and saving custom reports, new report sharing options, new textual and graphical reports, and the ability to export charts and graphs in PDF format.

The 360 Counter reporting enhancements are free to all 360 Counter subscribers.

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Physicians Interactive LLC (PI), the leading digital sales and health marketing partner for life sciences companies, has announced the acquisition of mobile medical references provider Skyscape, US. Skyscape is now a wholly owned subsidiary of PI. Under the acquisition agreement, Skyscape will continue to be led by Sandeep Shah, who will report to Donato Tramuto, vice chairman and CEO of Physicians Interactive Holdings LLC. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The Skyscape acquisition doubles PI's current physician network and adds more than one million health care professionals to the PI database, providing valuable insights into the online behaviour of physicians and other health care providers. The acquisition will allow for the development of new and enhanced decision support tools for health care professionals and expanded product offerings for pharmaceutical, biotech and other life science companies-all on one integrated platform available on multiple technologies.

Skyscape delivers medical content at the point of care through its multiple mobile platforms and broad internet presence. From drug dosing calculators and drug interactions to medical alerts to the latest research and clinical practice guidelines, Skyscape provides up-to-the minute information to enhance patient care. Gold standard content is delivered in partnership with more than 50 of the top medical publishers, associations and major medical institutions. Skyscape's SmartLink technology enables subscribers to customise how they view content and automatically generates 'smart links,' converting hundreds of editions and volumes of medical information into integrated decision tools.

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Health-information provider Healthy Advice Networks, US, has announced the launch of PracticeWire, a wireless broadband technology solution that delivers real-time health content to physicians all day via wall-mounted flat-screen monitors.

Strategically located in the back office, medical news and information is sourced from over 40 peer-reviewed medical journals and news feeds. Digital technology enables customisation at the location level allowing practices to post their own content regarding standards of care, reinforcing Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other regulatory guidelines. The network is fully supported by a companion website for in-depth article reviews.

Healthy Advice Networks delivers patient-education programmes in primary care, cardiology, women's health, pediatric, gastroenterology, urology, dermatology and rheumatology practices. The company is planning to launch another primary care network, as well as several new programmes, targeted to both physicians and patients, in 2010.

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Medhand International, Sweden, a supplier of Doctors reference libraries for mobile platforms, has announced the forthcoming launch of their intuitive iPhone reference book application. The first launch consists of four titles from the Oxford University Press Medical Handbook series - the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine and the Oxford Handbook of Tropical Medicine; and from the Oxford American Handbooks series - the Oxford American Handbook of Clinical Medicine and the Oxford American Handbook of Critical Care. More than 25 Oxford Medical Handbook titles are expected to be launched before year-end.

The intuitive iPhone application is designed for single Oxford Handbooks with the objective of allowing professional users to access precisely the information they need or reference content with a three-click action.

The iPhone application was custom developed by Medhand with the focus on Oxford Medical Handbooks series, allowing physicians to securely access authentic medicine reference from iPhones. It will be applied to a number of titles allowing iPhone and iPod users to access professional information from their handheld platforms.

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Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC), US, has announced that the WorldCat Mobile pilot, a programme that makes collections from libraries visible through mobile devices, has been extended to Europe. Expanding the pilot to Europe means that now phones in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, and France will also be operational.

The WorldCat Mobile pilot allows users to search for and find books and other materials available in libraries near them through a Web application they can access from a PDA or smartphone. Based on WorldCat.org, the pilot has already proved a huge success in the US and Canada. Advanced global positioning capabilities found in many smartphones and PDAs make it possible for users to find local library materials, if the library in question has loaded records in WorldCat, no matter where they happen to be.

Created in collaboration with Boopsie, Inc., a US-based provider of software for mobile devices, the WorldCat Mobile pilot is a downloadable application that supports many devices, including Nokia, Blackberry and iPhone. OCLC is currently inviting feedback from European users as to their experiences with the service.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced the launch of SciVal Spotlight, a customised web-based tool that offers institutions a multidisciplinary perspective of research performance to evaluate, establish and execute more informed research strategies.

SciVal Spotlight uses a visualisation technique to produce customised maps that provide graphical views of an institution's performance over time and across scientific fields, focusing on specific topical areas. By pinpointing a university's topical strengths and identifying leading researchers and institutions in each area, the tool is designed to help academic decision-makers optimise funding allocations and enhance hiring and collaboration decisions.

Quantifying the overall size of each topical area, the tool allows institutions to understand the significance of their article and market shares and how they rank compared to competitors in those areas. It also assesses article and market growth or decline over the last five years, offering an average rate for each using a two year sliding scale. Additionally, it determines if an institution's work is building upon the most recent discoveries; providing a 'state of the art quotient' by analysing how recent the citations are within its published output.

SciVal Spotlight is based on a detailed model of the current structure of science. The model, covering virtually all of the research being published across the globe, was developed using co-citation analysis of a comprehensive database that includes 6.1 million separate papers published between 2004 and 2008, and another two million of the highly-cited references from these papers.

Leveraging this new model of science, SciVal Spotlight identifies and focuses on the inter-related work being done within an institution which represents the topical areas or 'distinctive competencies' in which it is a leader. It also offers an opportunity to better understand which institutions are true competitors by revealing those that compete within the same research competencies.

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Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing, US, has added more than 500 clinical calculators to DynaMed, an evidence-based clinical decision support resource.

Licensed from MedCalc 3000, these calculators include medical equations, decision support tools, prediction tools, statistics calculators, dose conversion tools and unit conversion tools. Clinical calculators help clinicians to choose the best diagnostic tests and interpret the results as well as provide test characteristics. Calculators also help to determine the likelihood of a diagnosis, estimate a patient's risk for a disease and estimate a given prognosis.

Expanding the content and tools available in DynaMed is an ongoing mission of EBSCO Publishing in order to provide the best available evidence to clinicians at the point-of-care. In the last few years DynaMed has been updated with a new, intuitive interface and expanded coverage to more than 3,000 clinical topics. Resources such as drug information, IDC-9/ICD-10 codes and patient education handouts have also been added. In addition, access to DynaMed content has been extended through partnerships with medical content providers such as LexiComp and Zynx Health.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has announced results of its SciVal Spotlight Alternative Energy Research Leadership study. Analysing the work of 3,000 research institutions from across the globe, the study identifies the top 25, using a new method for determining leadership.

Highlights of the findings were shared in a recent webcast, 'Research Leadership Redefined… Measuring Performance in a Multidisciplinary Landscape.' Over 1000 academic and government executives, researchers and librarians joined live or viewed the recorded version to learn more about the methodology behind the study which illustrates a new way to identify research leaders based on output in 'distinctive competencies'.

Distinctive competencies (DCs) represent expertise in specific research areas. They reveal the degree to which institutions have constructed multidisciplinary networks within their organisation focused on achieving specific breakthroughs. Indicating that research within the university is not being done in isolated silos, examining output in distinctive competencies offers a more accurate way of determining leadership in a given area than traditional measurement methods.

The SciVal Spotlight Alternative Energy Research Leadership study analyses the alternative energy work of 3,000 research institutions (primary universities) using SciVal Spotlight, Elsevier's new research performance measurement tool which is scheduled for release later this summer. Moving beyond the traditional method of measuring research output by journal count, the SciVal Spotlight tool is built on a more detailed model of the current structure of science. The model, covering almost all of the science being conducted across the globe, was developed using co-citation analysis of a comprehensive database including 5.6 million separate papers published between 2003 and 2007 and another 2 million of the heavily cited reference works within these papers.

Based on the top 50 institutions globally, the study also analyses country output in the three main alternative energy sub-topics or topic groups including solar/photovoltaic, fuel cells and environmentally-related areas (such as efficiency, renewable energy, biomass, wind, etc.).

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Healthcare publisher The BMJ Group, UK, recently announced the launch of a service that allows health professionals across the world to get on-the-spot access to expert opinion, guidelines and the latest clinical evidence on their mobile phone. This service is being made available at no extra cost to all subscribers of Best Practice, a new online decision support tool. Best Practice is designed to help practitioners, medical students and researchers find and effectively use appropriate medical information. Built specifically for point-of-care use, it seeks to help meet the real, diverse and evolving information challenges that health professionals face every day, whether in the surgery, hospital or out in the community.

This facility has been made possible through a joint agreement with Mobile IQ for the latter's mobile publishing platform, Fabric. The agreement allows access to any content contained in Best Practice on any mobile device, and the information is fully searchable to ensure easy navigation of the material. Fabric also supports links between mobile devices and e-mails to enable physicians who find an interesting article whilst on the phone can e-mail it to themselves and read it later at their desk.

Best Practice covers 10,000 diagnoses and all content is written and peer reviewed by specialists. It provides prescribing information, guideline summaries and expert opinion together with advice on symptom evaluation, test ordering and treatment strategies.

Best Practice Mobile is available on mobile phone at http://bp.bmjgroup.mobi or online at http://bestpractice.bmj.com/best-practice/marketing/best-practice-mobile.html

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Wolters Kluwer Health, US, has announced that its ProVation Medical procedure documentation and coding software allows users to transition to the new ICD-10 code set with minimal expense, training or disruption of workflow. The product, which is seen to answer the call for healthcare technology vendors to play a proactive role in the switch to ICD-10, is claimed to be ready to accommodate the expanded code sets. Also, its implementation and training teams are prepared to support client organisations throughout the transition process.

After originally proposing a 2011 deadline, the US' Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has set a 2013 compliance deadline for the adoption of ICD-10 by domestic healthcare organisations. Despite the two-year reprieve, healthcare organisations are already putting together their transition budgets and plans, a critical element of which is working with their technology vendors to ensure software and systems are ready for the switch.

According to a recent survey by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, 55 percent of hospital CIOs said they expected vendor readiness and cooperation to be one of the top hurdles in achieving ICD-10 compliance. Yet, 72 percent did not know if their vendors would include ICD-10 in annual software upgrades, and 60 percent said their vendors had not alerted them to implementation timelines.

ProVation seeks to replace dictation/transcription and streamline the coding and billing process. With deep medical content, it allows clinicians to quickly and completely document medical procedures and apply the appropriate CPT and ICD codes, as well as CCI edits, according to the company. ProVation is currently used by thousands of clinicians at more than 600 hospitals and ambulatory surgery centres, in specialties including cardiology, ENT, gastroenterology, general surgery, gynecology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, pain management, plastic surgery, pulmonology and urology.

The National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR) has announced that it will incorporate NexCura Cancer Profiler Tools from Thomson Reuters into its website. The 20 online tools will provide cancer patients with critical, customised information about their treatment options.

The tools were created using patented technology that guides users through a step-by-step questionnaire to match the patient's diagnosis, diagnostic results, and disease stage with the relevant treatment options. All information provided by the NexCura Cancer Profiler Tools is peer-reviewed.

NFCR offers the NexCura Cancer Profiler under the Treatment Decision Tools section of its website (http://www.nfcr.org/patientsupport.com). The NexCura Cancer Profiler claims to be the only online service generating comprehensive treatment information that is personalised for specific diagnoses and clinical status. The customised information enables patients to better communicate with their doctors and care teams and, through education, encourages the patient to play a more proactive role in treatment decisions.