VerusMed Unveils Evidence Grading System And Newly Redesigned VerusMed.com

New Four-Level Evidence Quality Grading System to Save Physicians Time

NASHVILLE, Tenn., January 8, 2008-VerusMed, a ConnectivHealth company, today announced the launch of its groundbreaking evidence grading system for all VerusMed clinical news briefs. VerusMed's evidence grading scale is among the first to be introduced to U.S. physicians through an easy-to-access medical information service. The launch coincides with the release of the newly redesigned and expanded VerusMed Website, verusmed.com.

VerusMed, which provides clinical news briefs to physicians and other health care professionals in dozens of therapeutic categories, is continuously enhancing all aspects of its physician information services. With its new evidence grading system, each clinical study reported on will be reviewed for quality of evidence and then assigned an appropriate grade, using a four-point scale.

"By providing evidence grades to our clinical news briefs, physician readers will be able to quickly and efficiently review the quality of the literature being discussed," said June Manning, VerusMed editor-in-chief. "With the addition of the evidence grading system, each of VerusMed's clinical news stories will receive an evidence grade that will appear next to the headline," she added.

Manning noted that VerusMed's innovative evidence grading system is similar to grading systems used by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), the American Medical Association, British Medical Journal, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Cochrane Collaboration, among others.

Jeff Andrews, M.D., chair of VerusMed's editorial advisory board and senior fellow of the Vanderbilt Center for Evidence-Based Medicine, developed VerusMed's evidence grading system, using standards created by the internationally recognized Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation Working Group, also known as GRADE (http://www.gradeworkinggroup.org), of which he is a member.

"Medical evidence, or the recommendations that are based on the evidence, can be of different quality levels," said Andrews. "Since poor quality evidence can lead to recommendations that are not in a patient's best interest, it is essential for physicians to know whether a study is strong or weak."

Andrews explained that sources of evidence range from small laboratory studies, or case reports, to well-designed, large clinical studies. "Based on the grade that is assigned, physicians can decide whether they want to continue reading the article or reference it for future reading," he said.

A number of factors are considered when assigning an evidence grade:

• Study design - therapeutic, prognostic, diagnostic or economic/decision analysis
• Number of study patients and the percentage of follow-up
• Statistical power
• Bias and influence
• Effect size
• Balance of benefits and risks

"Physicians have continually expressed to us that their most precious limited resource is time," said Scott McQuigg, CEO of ConnectivHealth. "We developed our new evidence grading system so that physicians can quickly determine the relevancy of information and invest their time in the studies that will have the greatest impact in their practice and for their patients."

In addition to the new evidence grading system, VerusMed's redesigned verusmed.com has many new features designed to help physicians quickly access relevant medical news and information by therapeutic area. The site's expanded features include online video, most read stories, most e-mailed stories and searchable archives.

About VerusMed

VerusMed, an evolution of Faxwatch, provides timely, unbiased medical information to physicians, health care professionals and industry executives. VerusMed's concise and objective editorial approach ensures that readers receive the most relevant therapeutic updates. With more than 150,000 readers across several dozen therapeutic and industry segment-specific publications, VerusMed is able to leverage its market connectivity to help companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, hospital and managed care industries to establish brands and build rapport with key audiences. VerusMed is a ConnectivHealth company. To learn more, visit www.verusmed.com or call 800-763-3329.

About ConnectivHealth

ConnectivHealth is a network of powerful health information brands that enables the delivery, distribution and organization of important health information for physicians, health care professionals, hospitals and schools through customized channels. Each brand serves a critical information need in the marketplace with the single goal of improving health. Privately held, the ConnectivHealth network includes: PeerClip, HealthTeacher, VerusMed and Discovery Hospital, a partnership with Discovery Communications. The company's investors include Petra Capital Partners of Nashville, Chrysalis Ventures of Louisville, Ky., and members of the management team. For more information, e-mail us at info@connectivhealth.com.