Philadelphia, May 19, 2008. The Board of Directors of patientINFORM has appointed Kathleen Case as Executive Director, to succeed the late Peter Banks. An international coalition of patient organizations, medical societies, and scholarly publishers, patientINFORM works to empower patients by providing online access to and interpretation of the latest and most important research in medicine.

The coalition of health organizations and publishers was created in 2005 under the leadership of the American Cancer Society; the American Diabetes Association; the American Heart Association; the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM); and the Professional Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP-PSP) . The National Organization for Rare Disorders and the ALS Association joined in 2006 and the Arthritis Foundation in 2007.

With the collaboration of scientific publishers worldwide, voluntary health organizations and other trusted sources post patient-oriented summaries of important peer-reviewed research on their websites and provide a free link to the original article as soon as it is published on a journal’s website. Over 700 journals are participating and hundreds of articles have been summarized and accessed by the public through patientINFORM.

Until recently, Ms. Case held the position of Publisher at the American Association for Cancer Research and she is a former Senior Vice President for Publishing at the American College of Physicians and Executive Editor of Annals of Internal Medicine. She is past president of the Council of Science Editors and of the Society for Scholarly Publishing; served on the Publications Committee of the American Heart Association; the Governing Board for Publishing of the American Chemical Society; and is currently a member of the Journal Oversight Committee of the American Medical Association.

“We are extremely pleased to find an Executive Director with such an extensive publishing background in both clinical medicine and biomedical research,” said Thomas Easley, Managing Director, Publishing, for The New England Journal of Medicine and President of patientINFORM. “Ms. Case was part of the group that founded patientINFORM, and she has experience that spans patient education and scholarly publishing.”

Ms. Case will manage the coalition from the offices of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). “As an organization with a mission that emphasizes research, patient education and advocacy, we are pleased to participate in patientINFORM and to help support this important collaboration,” noted Dr. Margaret Foti, AACR’s CEO.

For further information, visit http://www. patientinform.org or contact patientINFORM, 615 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Phone: 215-440-9414; email: patientinform@aacr.org.