SearchMedica

Professional medical search engines now available for psychiatry and primary care professionals; SearchMedica Oncology to launch in Q2

New York, January 22, 2007 – CMPMedica, a leading global provider of healthcare information and education, today unveiled SearchMedica Primary Care, the second vertical or specialty-specific search engine offered through SearchMedica.com, a free Web-based service that connects physicians and other medical professionals to credible, medical Web sites, online journals and other clinical resources. CMPMedica plans to further expand SearchMedica.com when it unveils SearchMedica Oncology later in Q2 2007.

“We asked 6,000 physicians to share their opinions on mainstream consumer search engines,” said Cyndy Finnie, senior product manager for SearchMedica at CMPMedica. “Most primary care physicians of any age and more than 90 percent of those aged 45 or younger said they turn to the Internet for clinical information, but 65.4 percent of primary care physicians cited too many irrelevant results as their main challenge when using Google.”

SearchMedica.com addresses this “consumer clutter” problem by only indexing reliable medical information, approved for inclusion by medical editors and a physician editorial board. Medical professions receive a much more relevant, smaller set of search results from SearchMedica than they would from mainstream engines, which contain consumer-oriented, overseas and other types of unreliable information. Searching on the phrase ‘diagnosing depression’ on Google, for example, returns more than one million results, most of which are geared toward consumers. The same search on SearchMedica Primary Care nets less than 5,000 results, from credible sources of reliable medical information and organized into helpful categories that help medical professionals quickly find the information or other resources they seek.

“SearchMedica results are far more relevant to clinical practice than what medical professionals find at other search engines, and they appreciate the fact that the service is supported by category sponsorships and keyword advertisements, making it free for them to use,” added Finnie. “The response we’ve received from both advertisers and medical professionals has been very positive. Clinicians are presented with fewer, more appropriate advertisements than what they’re used to seeing at mainstream consumer search engines.”

All SearchMedica search results are independent, unbiased and ranked according to relevance. They contain well-known, credible journals, peer-reviewed research, and evidence-based articles written for practicing healthcare professionals. In developing SearchMedica Primary Care, CMPMedica followed guidance from the editorial boards of Consultant, a leading medical journal. In each of the SearchMedica vertical search engines, clinicians receive a specialist’s view of the Web and an easy to use interface. Healthcare professionals are encouraged to register to receive updates about new content and tips on how to use various advanced tools within SearchMedica.

In addition to ranking search results according to relevance as most search engines do, SearchMedica also organizes results into such categories as practical articles and news, research reviews and editorials, evidence-based articles and meta-analyses, practice guidelines, clinical trials for patients, continuing medical education, and alternative-complementary medicine. This segmented organization makes it easier than ever for healthcare professionals to pinpoint the information they seek. Practical articles, research reviews, evidence-based medicine and practice guidelines focus results specifically on documents that address a physician’s unanswered clinical questions. Clinical trials and alternative and complementary medicine provide useful information for patient encounters, as do patient education materials, which will be incorporated in the future. Continuing medical education offers information about course work and online continuing medical education opportunities to help clinicians pursue opportunities for lifelong learning and stay up to date in certification.

About CMPMedica
CMPMedica, a division of United Business Media plc, provides healthcare information and education to primary care physicians, specialists, pharmacists and patients around the world. Providing journals, magazines, directories, drug databases, other electronic databases, Web sites, face-to-face meetings and other valuable resources, CMPMedica also delivers comprehensive communication solutions for the pharmaceutical and related industries. Employing more than 1,400 people with offices in 29 countries, CMPMedica is headquartered in London. In the U.S., CMPMedica provides comprehensive continuing medical education for medical professionals across a wide range of specialties; SearchMedica.com, a unique medical search engine built by doctors for doctors that indexes medicine’s most credible sources to provide fast and clinically relevant results; and three publishing divisions – the Cliggott Group, the Newsmagazines Group and the Oncology Group, which collectively publish fourteen of the best read U.S. clinical publications. For more information, visit CMPMedica.com.