MILAN, Italy, January 22 /PRNewswire/ -- 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 Elsevier's content and services with Edra's 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 http://www.dica33.it (the leading Italian consumer health portal) http://www.doctor33.it, (the leading medical doctors portal), and http://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."

About Elsevier Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. Working in partnership with the global science and health communities, Elsevier's 7,000 employees in over 70 offices worldwide publish more than 2,000 journals and 1,900 new books per year, in addition to offering a suite of innovative electronic products, such as ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com/), MD Consult ( http://www.mdconsult.com/), Scopus (http://www.info.scopus.com/), bibliographic databases, and online reference works.

Elsevier (http://www.elsevier.com/) is a global business headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and has offices worldwide. Elsevier is part of Reed Elsevier Group plc (http://www.reedelsevier.com/), a world-leading publisher and information provider. Operating in the science and medical, legal, education and business-to-business sectors, Reed Elsevier provides high-quality and flexible information solutions to users, with increasing emphasis on the Internet as a means of delivery. Reed Elsevier's ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).

Name: Shira Tabachnikoff E-mail: s.tabachnikoff@elsevier.com Phone: +31(0)20-485-2736

Name: Shira Tabachnikoff, E-mail: s.tabachnikoff@elsevier.com, Phone: +31(0)20-485-2736