NHS England purchases online medical image database from BioMed Central

[Natasha Robshaw <natasha@biomedcentral.com>]

Press Release:  2 March 2004
For Immediate Release

NHS England purchases online medical image database from BioMed Central

BioMed Central announced today that it has signed a subscription agreement
with The National Health Service (NHS) England for the online encyclopedia
of medical images, images.MD. NHS England's subscription, commencing in
April 2004, provides access to the entire content of images.MD for all 1.2
million NHS staff.

The decision to subscribe to the innovative medical images product was in
direct response to requests from medical researchers, the NHS said.
According to Scott Gibbens, Project Manager of the NHS Core Content Group,

"Our decision to subscribe to images.MD for the whole of NHS England was
driven by high demand from users. This product is great value for money,
and meets our need for a comprehensive, high-quality images database for
teaching and diagnosis. As a company BioMed Central continues to provide
new invaluable and innovative resources along with excellent service."

NHS England's decision to purchase images.MD further cements the
relationship between the Health Service and BioMed Central. BioMed Central
is fast becoming a key service provider to the NHS. Aswell as providing a
valuable publishing service to NHS researchers, whereby under the NHS 2003
membership agreement all NHS staff can publish an unlimited number of
research articles in BioMed Central journals without incurring the usual
article processing charge, BioMed Central provides indispensable content
including the 100+ Open Access journals it publishes and a range of
secondary, value-added products like images.MD.  The Open Access journals
are free to access for anyone with an internet connection.

The NHS signed up for BioMed Central membership for the whole of England
in April 2003 - becoming the first of a growing number of national
organisations to take up membership. Scott Gibbens said at the time,

"This deal is really exciting for us as it gives us an opportunity to be
leaders in free access electronic publishing"

BioMed Central membership has been hugely successful, with a substantial
number of articles submitted and published by authors employed by the NHS
since April last year. NHS England and BioMed Central have worked closely
together to build awareness and acceptance of Open Access journals amongst
UK medics. Building on this productive relationship, BioMed Central is now
providing NHS England with one of its premier subscription products.

images.MD compiles over 50,000 high-quality images spanning all of
internal medicine, all derived from Current Medicine's renowned series of
illustrated atlases. Each image is accompanied by detailed and informative
text written by over 2,000 contributing experts. According to Head of
Marketing, Natasha Robshaw;

"Images.MD is a fantastic product and we predict huge sales as awareness
in the market grows. NHS England's decision to subscribe is very exciting
for us - with BioMed Central membership they have shown themselves to be
leaders in the adoption of electronic publishing models and healthcare
products. We are pleased that we are able to continue to innovate and
provide must-have products and services to our key customers.  We hope
that other major medical institutions will now follow the NHS's lead and
subscribe to images.MD."


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