Business News
Elsevier acquires Edra S.p.A
Wednesday 23. January 2008 - Elsevier has acquired Edra S.p.A, an online publishing company in the healthcare field. Together, Elsevier and Edra will be able to provide professional and promotional support to pharmaceutical companies by combining Elseviers content and services with Edras electronic capabilities and online delivery channel.
An important tool is Medikey, the largest online medical and healthcare professional community in Italy.
Elsevier Masson S.r.l, based in Milan, is the market leading provider of scientific and medical content and services, in the form of books, journals, drug databases and pharmaceutical marketing support.
Edra S.p.A., also based in Milan, provides e-pharma promotional services and is Continual Medical Education provider certified by the Italian Ministry of Health and the region of Lombardy, both for residential and distance learning. The company was founded in 1986 by Vincenzo Coluccia, who holds majority ownership in Edra and is Managing Director.
Edra is well known for Medikey, a broad medical community of 200,000 Italian doctors, 37,000 pharmacists, 40,000 healthcare professionals (biologists nurses, etc), 70,000 policy and decision makers (national and regional ones), and Azfarma, a community of more than 15,000 pharma and medical device managers.
Edra publishes important online magazines including Doctornews33, Dermatologia33 and Cardiologia33 for doctors, Farmacista33 for pharmacists and Pharmamarketing to pharma managers. Edra also maintains the portals www.dica33.it (the leading Italian consumer health portal) www.doctor33.it, (the leading medical doctors portal), and www.pharmamarketing.it (for pharmaceutical company professionals).
Vincenzo Coluccia, Managing Director of Edra, comments: “We see wonderful opportunities to serve Edra clients even better by giving them access to the superior Elsevier Masson content and services. I look forward to contribute to the development of the possibilities that will emerge”.
Wubbo Tempel, Managing Director of Elsevier Masson Italy, says: “This is a very important acquisition for, Elsevier as there will be no other company in Italy able to deliver personalized content service directly to health care professionals in the way we will be able to”.