Elsevier acquires Edra

Elsevier has acquired Edra, an online publishing company in the healthcare field. Together, Elsevier and Edra hope to be able to provide professional and promotional support to pharmaceutical companies by combining Elsevier’s content and services with Edra’s electronic capabilities and online delivery channel.

Wubbo Tempel, managing director of Elsevier Masson Italy, commented: ‘This is a very important acquisition for Elsevier as there will be no other company in Italy able to deliver personalised content service directly to health care professionals in the way we will be able to.’

Edra, based in Milan, provides e-pharma promotional services and is a ‘continual medical education’ provider certified by the Italian Ministry of Health and the region of Lombardy, both for residential and distance learning. The company 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.