EVANSTON, Ill., Jan. 14, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- PEPID LLC, the premier developer of handheld medical reference software for healthcare professionals, announced today that it has signed a licensing agreement with Harvard Medical School and the CareGroup Healthcare System. The agreement allows all medical students, faculty and staff at Harvard and its affiliated hospitals to use PEPID ED (Emergency Doctor), PEPID MD (Medical Doctor), PEPID RN (Registered Nurse), PEPID MSC (Medical Student Companion), and PEPID PDC (Portable Drug Companion) products for a period of one year.
John Halamka, M.D., CareGroup's CIO, comments, "The medical students have experience using this software. Our entire clinical staff is looking forward to having this PDA-based resource available to them in the classroom and at the bedside."
"We are very proud that our software is the clinical application of choice that Harvard students, faculty and staff will be using this year," states PEPID Founder and CEO Mark Rosenbloom, MD. Rosenbloom is a board certified emergency physician at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. "Dr. Halamka is a visionary in the use of point-of-care technologies to improve patient care and reduce medical errors and his recognition of PEPID in this regard is an excellent acknowledgement of our efforts to assist the medical professional."
Serving one million patients each year, the Harvard-affiliated CareGroup Healthcare System employs 12,000 staff members, which includes 3,000 physicians and 2000 nurses. Harvard Medical School has a faculty of nearly 8,000 and has an enrollment of 650 men and women in the MD program; 477 students in the PhD program; and 132 in the joint MD-PhD programs, part of which is sponsored in collaboration with MIT.
PEPID medical professional programs were initiated in 1994 when a team of 35 medical and pharmaceutical professionals came together and created the first version of PEPID (the Portable Emergency Physician Information Database), now called PEPID ED. PEPID ED was designed to assist in the reduction of medical errors and improve patient outcomes. PEPID's six current professional products are the result of 8 years of an ongoing effort by more than 120 health care professionals, providing access to the most comprehensive, accurate and current pharmacological and clinical information at the point-of-care via personal digital assistants (PDAs).
For more information about PEPID professional products, visit www.pepid.com. A version of PEPID's emergency medical software database is now available to consumers as, "Your Step-By-Step Guide to Injuries, Illnesses & Emergencies" at www.pepidguide.com, or call 1-888-321-STAT (7828).