New Benchmark in Healthcare: More Than 225,000 Mobile Medical Professionals Rely on Skyscape for Critical Information On-the-Go

Business Wire,  Oct 27, 2003  

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Business Editors/Health/Medical Writers/High-Tech Writers

HUDSON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 27, 2003

Hospitals and Schools Turning to Handheld Technology To Help

Improve Efficiencies, Streamline Operations and Reduce Medical Errors

Skyscape, Inc., a leading provider of interactive, intelligent mobile solutions for the healthcare enterprise, today announced that more than 225,000 medical professionals at over 300 institutions--including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, physician assistants, residents and medical students, have registered to use Skyscape-powered software. This is a 100 percent growth in registered users in less than a year and as a result, Skyscape has the largest installed base of subscribers in the mobile healthcare information industry.

"With more than 50 percent of doctors and an ever growing number of nurses relying on handheld computers, the need for and the power of the PDA in medical settings is clearly demonstrated," said Sandeep Shah, CEO of Skyscape. "Skyscape is the only company providing trusted, gold standard medical content for PDAs, and more importantly, Skyscape provides it in an integrated way that mirrors how physicians work. What is especially significant is the nature of Skyscape's growth - it is coming primarily through hospitals and educational institutions that are deploying our solution throughout the enterprise."

Growing Skyscape's Enterprise Base

Hospitals, medical groups, residency and education programs are increasingly turning to Skyscape to meet their mobile information needs. In the past six months, Skyscape has added more than 200 hospitals and residency programs to its customer base. Shah adds, "For example, our recent partnership with the University of Louisville has more than 900 medical professionals relying on Skyscape powered references."

"It made sense to offer University of Louisville School of Medicine health sciences students PDAs to support their learning. The devices are mobile, affordable and highly functional--especially when loaded with efficient, helpful references, such as those we purchased from Skyscape," said Ruth Greenberg, senior administrator for educational affairs at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.

Driving factors behind Skyscape's enterprise adoption are increased efficiencies, streamlined operations and the significant reductions in medical errors realized by medical professionals using PDAs at the point of care. Research has shown that the ability to capture and retrieve information at the point-of-care can decrease the time it takes for delivering care in half and can significantly reduce prescription and other errors. This is important, for preventable medical errors have been estimated to cost the American economy from $17 to 29 billion annually. Specifically, preventable adverse drug reactions cost the average 700-bed hospital an added $2.8 million annually.

Giving Medical Professionals the Information They Need--Around the World

Skyscape's ART(TM)-based solutions enable 230,000 practitioners to follow their own intuitive thought process and workflow, improving care quality and reducing administrative time by bringing critical, actionable information to physicians, nurses and other medical professionals. Around the world--from leading teaching hospitals, to AIDS projects in remote locations in Uganda and Kenya, to military deployments in the Middle East and Southeast Asia--Skyscape's products give medical professionals the information they need to diagnose illnesses, determine treatment, prescribe medication, identify drug interactions, calculate dosages, and perform all the necessary steps involved with quality patient care.

"As an Internal Medicine doctor, I am frequently deployed around the world in often very remote locations. I cannot take all my favorite medical text books with me and often find myself at a loss for high quality medical references," said Major Steve Krause, MD, US Army. "Thanks to Skyscape products I can download an endless array of medical texts to my PDA. I find Skyscape products easy to use, medically accurate, and my best battle companion."

About Skyscape

Skyscape is the leading provider of interactive, intelligent mobile solutions for healthcare enterprises and individual practitioners. Skyscape's mobile platform enables the enterprise-wide deployment of the industry's most extensive portfolio of handheld medical and nursing reference information to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare decision making at the point-of-care. Skyscape utilizes its patented ART (Advanced Reference and Transaction) infrastructure technology to create compelling high-value solutions for handheld devices that reflect and support the intuitive thought processes of the medical practitioner.

Skyscape has the largest installed base of paying customers in the industry, including individual and communities of medical practitioners at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Stanford Medical School, Partners Health System, Duke University, Mayo Clinic, and Kaiser Permanente. Skyscape's solutions are available on multiple platforms, including Palm OS(R), Windows(R) CE and Pocket PC. For more information about Skyscape, please visit our Website at www.skyscape.com.