Internet site brings medical library to the physician's desktop; Provides new forums for creating medical consensus; Physicians' Home Page is launched.

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 20, 1996-- The Internet has been making headline news for months.

Most of the news relates to entertainment and technology, but a growing number of companies are offering services specifically for physicians. SilverPlatter, well known for its bibliographic databases, has launched an Internet service called Physicians' Home Page (PHP).

One significant innovation of PHP is to deliver major medical databases such as MEDLINE, AIDSLINE, CancerLIT and the Drug Information Handbook to the physicians' desktop through the World Wide Web. Any doctor with access to the Web (for example through the Netscape browser) can search these databases by title, author, word or key-word term.

An advantage of accessing these databases on the Web is that you can link straight from the bibliographic citation to the original article if the publisher has made the original document available on the Web. When full documents are not available on the Web, PHP offers fax delivery of the article by a Web link to document delivery companies.

PHP has also invested in the creation of the MD Internet Library. This is a collection of medical resources on the Internet which has been organized into clinically relevant groups such as: Patient Information, Journals, Practice Parameters, CME, Image Resources, Medical Specialty Groups and Classified Advertising. This greatly helps physicians to find their way around today's chaotic Internet.

Physicians' Home Page is backed by an Editorial Board of physicians from Harvard University and other leading medical institutions. The Editorial Board is responsible for organizing a consensus discussion based on important medical questions (MD Opinions). Experts are invited by the Board to submit their own opinions on each of the questions. In addition users of the service can interactively submit their own opinions for evaluation by the Board and publication as part of the PHP. The initial editorial focus is internal medicine, but specialty versions are planned.

Tony Alves, Publisher at PHP says, "Offering access to MEDLINE and drug databases is only a starting point for Physicians' Home Page. Since the Web is an open architecture, Physicians' Home Page offers an excellent collaborative platform for the development of new content in partnership with medical specialty groups and medical publishers."

Dr. Michael Rees, Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Mark E. Deutchman, University of Colorado School of Medicine, are co-Editors for the new service. Says Dr. Rees, "The World Wide Web allows for rapid dissemination of important knowledge so that colleagues from around the world can improve patient care by communicating and learning from each other."

A basic membership to PHP is $19.95 per month ($9.95 for residents) and the first month is free. To become a Physicians' Home Page member, physicians fill out an online form. The URL for Physicians' Home Page is http://www.silverplatter.com/physicians. -0-

Attention Editor: Photographs of Dr. Rees, Dr. Deutchman, and Tony Alves are available. Screen shots are also available. Interviews may be arranged. Free press memberships are available to qualified medical journalists. Please contact Michael Grover at 1-617-769-2599. Backgrounder available.

CONTACT: Physicians' Home Page

SilverPlatter Education

100 River Ridge Drive

Norwood, MA 02062-504

Tel: [phone] (US and Canada) or 1-617-769-2599

Fax: [phone]

e-mail: [e-mail]

www: http://www.silverplatter.com/physicians

or

Michael Grover, 1-800-343-0064

or

1-617-769-2599 ext. 173

e-mail: [e-mail]