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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AMA and Sermo Enter Into Partnership To Empower Physicians

Nation’s largest physician organization teams with leading online physician community to hear and act on physicians’ needs in a way never before possible

Cambridge, MA – May 30, 2007 – The American Medical Association (AMA) and Sermo today announced a collaborative agreement to empower physicians by making their collective voice heard in a way never before possible. By teaming with Sermo, the AMA will be able to address important professional and public health issues in a multi-phase, multi-year alliance aimed at improving medical practice, physician advocacy, and patient care.

“The Sermo community represents an innovative forum for physicians to share their voice with the AMA and discuss emerging issues on the front lines of medicine,” said Cecil B. Wilson, M.D., chair of the AMA Board.  “Engaging with Sermo’s virtual community adds to the resources the AMA can call upon to rapidly assess and respond to the issues and concerns of physicians across the Unites States.”

The AMA and Sermo have been working together to create initiatives that have a tangible value for physicians.  “We’re working with Sermo to learn how we can use cutting edge Web technology to better serve our physician members and help advance our strategic pillars of advocacy, communications and involvement,” said Dr. Wilson.

As part of this relationship, AMA and Sermo will work together to:

• Create a direct line of communication between physicians and AMA leadership by allowing AMA to pose questions, get feedback, and observe real-time discussions on Sermo about medical practice, treatment options, and the latest advances in clinical care.



• Include a “Discuss on Sermo” link in AMA print and online publications, including the AMA’s award-winning American Medical News, which reach more than 350,000 physicians. This new link will allow physicians nationwide to immediately discuss, survey, and corroborate opinions about the latest health care news and research.



• Leverage Sermo to help AMA policy development around public health issues.



• Create a special home in the Sermo community specifically designed for AMA’s physician members.



• Amplify the most hotly debated issues among physicians within the Sermo community by producing a “Top Postings” column in the weekly AMA eVoice e-newsletter, which reaches more than 100,000 physicians nationwide.

Nearly 75 percent of office-based physicians work alone or in small group practices, with few opportunities to interact with peers or their professional organizations. Physicians are further burdened by increasing case loads, medical liability, reduced Medicare reimbursement, unprecedented numbers of uninsured patients, and managed care pressures on physician-patient relationships.  In this environment, today’s physicians must manage more responsibilities with less time and resources -- all while trying to deliver the best possible care for patients. 

By leveraging Web 2.0 technology, Sermo is providing a much needed online forum for physicians to interact. In just six months, Sermo has become the “go-to” place for thousands of physicians nationwide to ask and answer questions of each other, build consensus around the latest medical trends, and exchange insights about drugs, devices and treatment options. The Sermo community has rapidly become an important new way for physicians to connect with each other, and now to connect directly with professional associations such as the AMA.

“Sermo shows how new technologies can make a direct impact on the practice of medicine,” said CEO of Sermo, Daniel Palestrant, M.D. “We’ve established an entirely new information exchange never before possible that is empowering physicians and giving them a collective voice they’ve never had.  Now the AMA will have a direct line to the physician community at large and can instantaneously see trends and issues challenging physicians nationwide.  This relationship opens the flood gates for hundreds of thousands of physicians to work together on Sermo and apply their collective thinking to revolutionize medical practice and better serve the public health.”

About Sermo
Launched in September 2006, Sermo is already the largest online physician community, ever.  Sermo’s Web-based platform provides a medium for physicians to aggregate observations from daily practice then — rapidly and in large numbers — challenge or corroborate each other’s opinions.  This forum accelerates the discovery of emerging trends and provides new insights into medications, devices and treatments. Through Sermo, physicians exchange knowledge with each other the minute it is learned and gain potentially life saving insights from colleagues as they happen instead of waiting to read about them in conventional media sources. Sermo harnesses the power of collective wisdom and enables physicians to discuss new clinical findings, report unusual events, and work together to improve patient care in a way never before possible. Through its unique business model, Sermo is free to physicians and has no advertising or promotion.  Based on a system of information arbitrage, Sermo allows healthcare organizations, financial services firms and industry analysts to access the community’s collective knowledge on a subscription basis.  For more information, visit www.sermo.com.

About the American Medical Association
The American Medical Association helps doctors help patients by uniting physicians nationwide to work on the most important professional and public health issues. Working together, the AMA's quarter of a million physician and medical student members are playing an active role in shaping the future of medicine. For more information on the AMA, please visit www.ama-assn.org.

Press Contacts:

Gregory Shenk
Sermo Marketing Communications
Phone: (617) 497-1110
E-mail: gshenk@sermo.com

Robert J. Mills
AMA Media Relations
Phone: (312) 464-5970
E-mail: robert.mills@ama-assn.org