Map of Medicine sold to Hearst Corporation

07 Apr 2008

Map of Medicine, the provider of web-based patient pathways tool developed from an NHS-funded research project and widely installed across the health service, has been bought from Informa by the Hearst Corporation for an undisclosed sum.

Map of Medicine offers clinical information simply displayed online as 392 graphic patient pathways. It has been adopted as one of the applications offered by the £12.4bn NHS IT programme.

The software, offered through a web portal, has become one of the main services delivered by Fujitsu and Computer Sciences Corporation under the NHS IT programme.

Some of the health guides within Map of Medicine have also been incorporated within new NHS Choices website as information resources for patients. In addition the NHS-funded Map is also available through NHS agencies including the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the National Patient Safety Agency and the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement.

Work on the ‘Map’ began in 2000, and was the result of six years work by a dedicated team involving more than 500 doctors and nurses. The original development work was undertaken by the NHS and stems from an original partnership between the Royal Free and University College Medical School, the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust and the NHS National Library for Health.

Hearst’s president and CEO, Victor Ganzi, president & CEO, Hearst Corporation, confirmed on 2 April that Hearst had bought the clinical decision support system from Informa for an undisclosed fee. Map of Medicine, will now be managed in London as a separate operating unit.

Ganzi said: “The acquisition of Map of Medicine demonstrates Hearst's commitment to improving the quality and effectiveness of health-care for governments, societies and individuals.”

Richard Malloch, president of Hearst Business Media, said: “Map of Medicine, in combination with Zynx, will allow us to significantly grow our international health-care information business into the future.”

Mallach added: “With this acquisition, we now have an unparalleled collection of clinical databases and software, as well as a world-class group of physicians, nurses and pharmacists in the global health-care industry.”

Map of Medicine was founded in 2000 at London's Royal Free Hospital by Owen Epstein and Mike Stein. It was bought by business publisher Informa Plc in 2005.

“I’m delighted to join Hearst Corporation and look forward to the many opportunities we will have with the combination of these databases and executives,” said Stein, who is also chief medical officer of Map of Medicine.

“Together with Zynx, I believe we are going to make a tremendous difference in health-care. As a result of the Map of Medicine's success, demand is growing internationally, particularly in markets where health-care services are provided publicly, such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Nordic countries,” he added.

Links

Map of Medicine

Hearst Corporation

Reader's Comments

Choice?

07 Apr 08 16:31

Map of medicine was adopted to provide easy wins in areas where there was nothing else being implemented. It fails to provide choice pathways and will, I believe, soon disappear. (Post edited by EHI)

Another toy that no-one plays with?

08 Apr 08 07:42

A colleague says that she finds streetmaps.co.uk more useful in her day-to-day practice than the Map of Medicine provided by NPfIT!

Streetmaps is free: how much did MoM cost the NHS?

Local Editing Not Available

11 Apr 08 09:30

I was interested in Map of Medicine so that my Trust could add in local clinical practice guidelines. Unfortunately, there is only 1 editor for all the Trusts in our county, making it difficult to distinguish local guidelines for individual Trusts. I wonder if this is a staffing issue. How much time does MoM require on the part of local IT Depts. to be really useful?

Another own goal !

11 Apr 08 11:52

This is so frustrating. MoM was developed by the NHS, great tool, good user interface.

CfH comes along, spends lots of money on 10 year license, and lots more on LSP hosting, which has created lots of stupid barriers, like - inability for clinicians to easily access from home, - a single 'local' map across an area linked to admin and not clinical flows (there may well be problems with staffing too, but this is fixed), - barriers to integration with all (non LSP) clinical systems, - no link to the publically available maps on www.nhs.uk These things have all been raised with them.

There are some areas where good localised content, and support for Choice pathways are being produced, but progress is so slowed up by the central bureaocracy and contracts, it beggars belief.