Harcourt to be Sole Owner Of MD Consult

Posted on May 19, 2000

Harcourt General, Inc. has announced it has signed an agreement with publisher Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), a Wolters Kluwer International Health & Sciences company, to acquire LWW's one-third interest in MD Consult, a clinical information resource for physicians. In a separate transaction, Harcourt General sold its professional publishing business to Wolters Kluwer. The professional publishing unit Miller's Accounting Guides, in print and electronic format -- Miller GAAP Guide, Miller GAAS Guide and Government GAAP Guide.

``Now that we are sole owners of MD Consult, we look forward to ambitiously investing in and growing the range of value-added services available through MD Consult while remaining committed to providing MD Consult subscribers with access to a rich and extensive collection of publications from many different publishers,'' said Peter Hoenigsberg, president of Harcourt's Scientific, Technical and Medical Group. MD Consult currently licenses content from more than 50 sources, including Wolters Kluwer. Under the agreement Harcourt and Wolters Kluwer will cross-license content.

``In the health sciences field, MD Consult, which now serves more than 120,000 paid subscribers, is already an Internet success story and will continue on that path as a separate unit,'' Mr. Hoenigsberg added. ``At the same time, it will play a key role in Harcourt's strategy to be the world leader in scientific, technical and medical publishing on the web.''

Based in St. Louis, MD Consult is a web-based clinical information service that provides unlimited access to full-text clinical content from a comprehensive range of sources. Over 120,000 physicians and other health professionals access MD Consult under paid subscription plans. The service is currently licensed by more than 350 health systems, hospitals, and other health care organizations.