Cambridge, United Kingdom, September 5, 2006 - Evidence Matters, a new digital medical resource that allows clinicians to compare therapies for their patients based on peer-reviewed medical research, is releasing specialty content in three new areas for its evidence-based search engine. These are modules covering disease topics in Respiratory Disorders, Gastroenterology, and Neurology. ProQuest Information and Learning is the exclusive global distributor of Evidence Matters to the academic and hospital markets.

The three new modules complement current content in Oncology, Cardiology, and Endocrine and Metabolic Disorders, illustrating Evidence Matters’ growing list of medical disciplines – expected to include 10 speciality areas by the end of the year.  Of the top ten medical diagnoses, these specialties represent about 87% of causes of death, 75% of admissions to hospitals, and 67% of ambulatory visits, based on reports from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

“There is an ever-increasing demand for evidence-based medicine,” said Dr. Ofer Allan Avital, founder and CEO of Evidence Matters.  “There is a drive for it from individual students and doctors who are being trained in the importance of evidence-based medicine, and from the institutional level where hospital managers and medical school faculty want to establish good practice.  In the end, evidence-based medicine works because individual practitioners want relevant evidence-based information to support them in their choices of therapy, and Evidence Matters helps them do that.”

In addition to this module release, Evidence Matters recently enhanced its user interface. Improvements included a simplified look to the Evidence Matters basic search page for IP-recognition users.  As well, the advanced Question Wizard form has been reorganised to make it even easier to construct searches in a PICO search structure (PICO = “Patient/Problem”, “Intervention”, “Comparison”, “Outcome”).  The PICO search structure provides for more evidence-based results.  New one-click contextual help is now available throughout the product web pages.  Evidence Matters can be accessed at www.evidencematters.com.

Evidence Matters goes beyond the information available in bibliographic databases to provide answers to clinical questions drawn from an enormous collection of statistical evidence. Evidence Matters has a simple “ask-a-question” interface and results are organised into summary graphs or tables, based on therapy effectiveness, safety, and cost.

Evidence Matters research comes from a range of sources including MEDLINE and CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health), as well as the Cochrane Library and renowned journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of the American Medical Association, British Medical Journal, and The Lancet.  

ProQuest began distributing Evidence Matters in January 2006, building further ProQuest’s family of health sciences information products. Evidence Matters complements ProQuest’s periodical full-text products and medical books.

Evidence Matters is an award-winning, venture-backed company.  MedTech Partners, originally formed by the Canadian Medical Discovery Fund and MDS Capital, is one of Canada's leading seed investors and is the main investor in Evidence Matters.

If you would like further product information please e-mail marketing@proquest.co.uk

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