The Sydney Olympics are providing prime opportunities to educate viewers about sports injuries. In addition to the up-to-the-minute Olympic updates viewers will get on NBC's
Web site (http://www.NBCOlympics.com), they'll get detailed information on their favorite athletes' sports injuries. The site is expected
to generate 10 million unique visitors frome Sept. 15 to Oct. 1.
The information featured online explains the causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of more than 70 kinds of injuries that affect both world-class and weekend
athletes. The site will also feature:
- simulations of how sports injuries occur;
- a link to GE Medical Systems Web site that describes the type of medical imaging equipment used to treat specific injuries;
- text from HealthGate that provides detailed accounts of individual sports injuries; and
After the Olympics, information about sports injuries will be available on the Health Gate Web site and on the Web sites of hospitals that subscribe to GE Medical Systems.
(GE Medical Systems, Charles Young, 262/544-3530)
Clinical Trials Site Attracts $8M Funding
An online clinical trials Web site recently announced an $8 million infusion of capital to promote the personalized access it will provide to more than 2,000 government and
pharmaceutical-sponsored research experiments. Earlier this month, Veritas Medicine secured the funding from four healthcare-focused venture capital firms to increase its
marketing and distribution initiatives, expand its number of disease profiles and enhance the interactive functions of its online features and resources.
Scheduled to launch next month, Veritas Medicine will initially provide access to reliable content about new treatments and clinical trials under way for 15 diseases. The Web
site will be promoted as an online solution for expediting the clinical trials enrollment process that typically takes 40 weeks and can costs healthcare companies $1 million each
day a drug is delayed from hitting the market.
With less than 5% of eligible patients with life-threatening illnesses participating in the thousands of clinical trials available each year, the research industry is
scrambling to develop more aggressive patient recruitment efforts.
Veritas will try to fill this void by forming:
- partnerships with leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies to provide consumer access to clinical trial availability;
- exclusive relationships with physicians from Harvard- and Tufts-affiliated hospitals who will provide the latest information on treatments for a wide range of chronic
conditions; and - content relationships with health-related Web sites, non-profit organizations and academic medical institutions.
For additional information on developing strategic patient recruitment campaigns, see HPRMN's cover story.
(Veritas Medicine, Donald Greene, 617/234-1514)