Briefly Noted
Briefly Noted
Dendrite withdraws offering
Dendrite International (Morristown, NJ) said in a statement that "due to continuing unfavorable market conditions, particularly involving companies in the Health Care Information Services (HCIS) space," it has withdrawn its previously announced follow-on offering of common stock.
The company said that this decision does not require it to update its prior disclosure regarding its prospects for 2Q99. Dendrite is an international provider of highly-specialized, integrated product and service offerings to support competitive sales strategies, primarily in the pharmaceutical industry.
A.D.A.M. now adam.com
A.D.A.M. Internet Health (Atlanta), a provider of consumer health information online, said it has changed its name to adam.com, which also is the domain name for the new www.adam.com web site. The site will debut on Monday in conjunction with the eHealthcare World trade show being held in Chicago. The name change was approved the company board, but will not be official until approved by company shareholders, with that vote expected this summer. However, the company said it will begin using the new name immediately under a d/b/a designation. In January, the board approved a similar resolution to change the name from A.D.A.M. Software to A.D.A.M. Internet Health, but no shareholder vote took place. "Our instincts were right in January, but we have seen such incredible developments with adam.com over the past four months that adam.com, plain and simply, has become the natural destiny of our 10 years of work,'" said Robert Cramer Jr., adam.com chairman and CEO. Over the past four months, adam.com has signed an agreement with Excite Inc. that provides more than 10,000 pages of adam.com content for the Excite Health channel, and the Excite co-branded health channel on Netscape Netcenter, each page containing a link to adam.com. In addition, adam.com has renewed its network television agreement with the CNN Networks.
Shareholders withdraw resignation demands
Base Ten Systems (Trenton, NJ) reported that Jesse Upchurch and Andrew Sycoff have filed an amended Form 13-D with the Securities and Exchange Commission, withdrawing their call for the resignation of the company’s CEO and a complete change in the board of directors. In the amended 13-D filing, Upchurch and Sycoff have been joined by another shareholder, Kevin Lockhart, with the three indicating they intend to "work with the company’s management to seek to maximize shareholder value."
Thomas Gardner, Base Ten chairman, president and chief executive officer, said their decision "will enable the board and management of Base Ten to focus 100% of our attention on our shared objective of building the value of Base Ten for all stakeholders proposed acquisitions of both the Almedica Technology Group and Select Software Tools plc and to establish Base Ten as a leading provider of manufacturing execution systems software to the health care and specialty chemicals markets." Base Ten develops execution systems and services for the pharmaceutical, chemicals and medical products industries.
IMS PharmaTrend to track U.K. OTCs
IMS Health (London) has launched its full PharmaTrend weekly Over-the-Counter (OTC) tracking service in the United Kingdom. The retail tracking service will cover community pharmacies, drugstore and pharmacy chains, and now for the first time, the leading U.K. supermarket chains.
PharmaTrend tracks a wide range of product categories, from OTC self-medication products such as aspirin to herbals, homeopathic medicine, first-aid products, cosmetics and even baby formula. The U.K. launch marks the 11th Western and Central European country tracked by PharmaTrend. IMS Health is an international provider of information solutions to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.
"The combination of U.K. supermarket data and weekly reporting creates a very powerful tool for pharmaceutical companies selling into the OTC market in the United Kingdom," said William Quaeyhaegens, vice president, IMS Health Self Medication.
Site tracks Internet health sites
Internet health information can be biased, misleading and downright wrong, and consumers need to learn how to distinguish the reliable from the unreliable, a government panel said last week. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official Thomas Eng told the panel that what is needed is "a voluntary quality standard." Eng headed the panel’s report on health-related web sites. The panel of physicians, health insurers and public health experts said web site operators should be forced to reveal who they are and their interest is in maintaining a site and posting information.
The panel considered recommending a kind of Internet seal of approval, but Eng said it would be impossible to accredit a web site operator or certify a particular site because there are so many. He noted that the popular Yahoo search engine site lists 20,000 different health-related sites. Mary Jo Deering, director of health communication at HHS, said the report would be unlikely to have any immediate effect on "bad" sites. "The snake-oil people are probably not even going to take notice of this report," she said. But she said the policy will encourage responsible site operators to identify themselves more clearly. Eng said 70 million people used the Internet last year, and 60% of them looked for health information at some point. The panel has established its own web site advising people what to look for, at www.scipich.org.
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