EBSCO Industries, Inc. :: News :: EBSCO Publishing responds to the Swine Flu outbreak by providing free and reliable information to <em>DynaMed</em> users.


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EBSCO Publishing responds to the Swine Flu outbreak by providing free and reliable information to DynaMed users.

No one imagined that the last two weeks of April would bring a worldwide health crisis or that EBSCO Publishing (EP) would end up providing the premier information source to the world’s medical community, but that is precisely what happened as DynaMed, EP’s evidence-based clinical decision support resource, became the resource people turned to for the latest information on the outbreak.

On Friday, April 24, as reported cases were increasing, the team behind DynaMed decided to create a specific “Swine Flu” topic that went live just two days later. The day after the topic went live, medical facilities around the world began to receive calls from worried patients with flu-like symptoms, and medical professionals began seeking information on the disease. At that time, DynaMed was the only online clinical database with comprehensive information on Swine Flu. Doctors logging in to competing resources were finding information on Swine Flu that had not been updated since January, while the DynaMed summary was averaging an update every two hours.

Since Swine Flu created an unprecedented need for information on a global scale, the decision was made to make the Swine Flu topic freely available as a public service. Given that medical updates were coming quickly during the first few days of the outbreak, this one clinical summary would be able to show the power behind DynaMed, a resource that truly is up to date. An e-mail campaign was devised and e-mail messages were sent to customers and non-customers alike to inform them of the free service.

The H1N1 topic is still posted and freely available and will remain there until the threat has passed.

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