PEPID RELEASES POINT-OF-CARE TOOL FOR EMERGENCY MEDICAL PERSONNEL

PEPID, LLC, the premier developer of handheld decision support tools for the medical community, today released PEPID EMS, a point-of-care decision support tool for Emergency Medical Services personnel.

Evanston, Illinois-February 14, 2002-PEPID, LLC, the premier developer of handheld decision support tools for the medical community, today released PEPID EMS, a point-of-care decision support tool for Emergency Medical Services personnel. PEPID, the current market leader in providing medical databases for personal data assistants (PDA's), delivers six database tools for healthcare practitioners including emergency physicians, MDs, registered nurses, medical students, pharmacology professionals as well as the newly available EMS tool.

PEPID EMS addresses the specific needs of emergency field personnel, supervisors and administrators by providing access to vital clinical, pharmacological and procedural information at the point-of-care.

PEPID EMS presents signs and symptoms encountered at any emergency call along with EMS-specific topics providing the basis for emergency scene management. It also provides expert advice for en route preparation, scene interventions and transport considerations. The drug and toxicology section within the EMS database contains hazardous material information as well as nuclear, biological and chemical weapon information. EMS personnel now have a comprehensive, portable database wherever and whenever decision support information is needed.

In developing this tool we included information that blended reference content with practical, point-of-care direction," said Charles Pozner, MD, co-Editor in Chief of PEPID EMS and director of pre-hospital care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Our authors and editors created a tool meant for application to daily practice. We included experiential information that is acquired through years of handling emergency medical situations. PEPID EMS users will instantly recognize that this tool has been created by practitioners familiar with the information needs of an emergency situation."

All databases are downloadable via personal computers, laptops or handheld devices and are sold on a monthly subscription basis. Monthly database updates enable healthcare professionals to access the most current information from their handheld computer by downloading the latest material through the PEPID website.

The EMS product lists the characteristics of fourteen hundred drugs enabling emergency personnel to administer accurate dosages. The recent inclusion of instantaneous weight based dosage calculations and surface based dosage calculations for the handheld computer at the point-of-care is integrated with an index containing over 30,000 hyperlinks to data. This revolutionary medical technological is in keeping with PEPID's corporate mission to improve overall healthcare quality and reduce medical errors.

"Hospital emergency care personnel serve as the ideal source for point-of-care decision support", said Tom Manning, President and Publisher of PEPID. Manning heralds the development of clinical databases and tools designed for use on PDAs as the next generation of clinical decision support. "PEPID'S strongest feature is the massive amount of integrated clinical and pharmacological content instantly accessible for users at the point-of-care," said Manning.

About PEPID
PEPID, the Portable Emergency and Primary Care Information Database, is designed to assist in the reduction of medical errors and improve patient outcomes. It provides healthcare professionals access to the most comprehensive, accurate and current pharmacological and clinical information at the point-of-care via personal data assistants (PDA's). PEPID was founded in 1994 by Dr. Mark Rosenbloom, a Board-Certified Emergency Physician at Northwestern University School of Medicine. PEPID covers medical and trauma topics typically encountered in emergency and primary care settings. For more information about PEPID products, visit www.pepid.com or contact John Wagner, Sr. Vice President of Business Development at jwagner@pepid.com