US FDA MedWatch partners for safety data

The US Food and Drug Administration's MedWatch adverse reaction andquality problem alerting systems for health care professionals is to partner with the ePocrates physicians' handheld network to send out critical safety information to physicians and other health care professionals in the network.

The purpose of the agreement is to disseminate safety alerts, recalls, withdrawals and important labeling changes to the ePocrates network of over 300,000 health care professionals and more than 150,000 physicians. "Our goal is to make this clinically-important safety information easy to use, timely and available at the point of care where health care professionals and their patients make shared decisions about diagnosis and treatment," said MedWatch's medical director, Norman Marks.