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Sermo Launches CME Alternative to 85,000 Physician Members

New Offering Disrupts Industry with Contextually Relevant CME that is Rated and Ranked by Thousands of US Physicians

Cambridge, MA, October 15, 2008 — Sermo, the largest physician-only online community, today announced the launch of its CME program, giving continuing medical education providers direct access to 85,000 physicians nationwide. Unlike other offerings, Sermo offers access to CME contextually-next to live, relevant physician discussions-and allows CME opportunities to be ranked, rated and discussed by all physician members of Sermo. This is made possible through Sermo's closed community, specifically designed to aggregate medical observations and insights from thousands of physicians at one time nationwide.

On Sermo, physicians exchange insights and observations in a collaborative online environment that allows them to pose questions, provide answers and offer opinions as well as openly discuss their medical perspectives with one another. Now accredited CME activities, that are relevant to those discussions, appear next to the discussions, offering physicians the opportunity to participate in formal education on the subject at hand. When physicians click on an activity, they can see how their peers have rated it, and often how they have practically applied the learning in their practices. Then, if they decide to move forward, Sermo provides a "bridge" directly to the opportunity and back to Sermo when it's completed.

This gives medical education providers a new way to reach physicians with the right activity the moment a topic of interest is being discussed. Physicians can also rate and comment on all opportunities, offering an instant feedback loop to medical education providers and ensuring physicians don't waste time reviewing weak or biased content. "Sermo's CME program allows medical education providers to reach more than 85,000 physicians, and is a natural extension of what physicians do every day on Sermo-teach and learn from each other," said Daniel Palestrant, CEO of Sermo. "However, instead of spamming physicians by pushing activities out in large numbers, we offer a unique 'pull' experience that puts control back in the physicians hands. Now physicians can participate in courses on their terms based on content they're already discussing with colleagues."

Sermo's platform also offers new ways for medical education providers to augment traditional expert panels by conducting needs assessment and gap analysis through targeted online surveys and community monitoring. Since thousands of physicians are exchanging insights daily on Sermo, the time it takes to get both qualitative and quantitative feedback from physicians is reduced to minutes, not the weeks or months traditional channels provide. Finally, Sermo makes it easy to determine outcomes by allowing providers to survey individual or large groups of physicians after an activity is completed.

Partnership with CECity:
Sermo offers physicians a fully automated online CME experience, and access to a vast library of CME activities, through its partnership with CECity. Through this relationship thousands of CME opportunities will be available to physicians through Sermo. Sermo's technology presents a particular educational activity to the physician when it is relevant to a physician or group of physicians discussing a medical issue. When a physician selects the activity, he or she is taken to an independent CECity powered site to access and complete the course. CME activities from leading CME accredited providers are hosted, or made accessible, from within the CECity platform.

Sermo is now adding more than 600 additional CME opportunities. Moving forward, Sermo has established a panel of industry thought-leaders from a variety of academic institutions, who are working together to provide new ways for physicians to earn AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ for participating in physician led case conferences and clinical discussions on Sermo.

"The interactive nature of Sermo's platform provides advantages that are available nowhere else, and ensures that our online CME offerings reach physicians just in time, at the point of care, and in a contextually relevant environment," said Simone Karp, RPh, Chief Business Officer at CECity. "We are thrilled to work with Sermo to create this dynamic community of learners."

CME Pricing:
Sermo offers opportunities for CME providers to bridge their educational content to US physicians starting from $20,000. The Sermo environment also offers medical education providers the opportunity to conduct very unique and cost effective needs assessments and outcomes measurements for their education programs. Sermo has flexible plans to meet limited and immediate needs, which represents savings of 60-80% over other sites such as Medscape.

About Sermo Sermo is the largest online community exclusively for physicians. On Sermo, physicians exchange knowledge and gain potentially life-saving insights directly from colleagues. 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. Through its unique business model, Sermo has created a marketplace that brings value to the knowledge of practicing physicians. By participating, physicians can be reimbursed for their insights by healthcare institutions, financial services firms and government agencies.

About CECity
CECity is the leading SaaS (Software as a Service) provider of lifelong learning and performance improvement (PI) technology platforms, and distribution networks, in healthcare. CECity's flagship Lifetime™ (patent pending) system integrates registries, medical education, ePortfolio, and performance assessment and improvement, with social networking, to allow organizations to rapidly launch PI, P4P, MOC, PQRI, and other educational or quality initiatives. CECity's powerful networking capabilities connect client branded portals, with content partners, allowing for rapid aggregation, distribution and access to content, to scale communities of practice and learners across the Internet. For more information about CECity, visit http://www.cecity.com.

Press Contact:
Jennifer Brown
Sermo, Inc.
P:617-500-2393
E: jbrown@sermo.com