Atlanta (June 22, 2004) -- MDdatacor, inc., an Atlanta-based healthcare informatics company, announced its US cardiology network has passed the 100 group practice level. MDdatacor is the nation's largest proprietary database of de-identified patient medical records, now comprising more than 2.87 million patients in the care of 1726 cardiologists.

The 102 practices that are now part of MDdatacor's physician network include many of the country's leading private practice research-oriented cardiology groups and heart institutes. MDdatacor's searchable database allows them to quickly and easily find the optimally qualified patients for clinical research studies, improve patient access to appropriate therapies, and measure the quality of care delivered to their patients.

"We are very gratified with the growing adoption of our services by the nation's top-tier cardiology practices. In less than two years, we have enrolled more than 100 leading groups, and we are currently exceeding our expectations for the network's rate of growth," said Blake Whitney, MDdatacor's president and chief executive officer.

Lynn Langley, RN, primary research coordinator at Southwest Florida Heart Group, a 21-physician cardiology practice in Fort Myers, Florida, explains how their group uses MDdatacor's database and services. "Our physicians and research coordinators use MDdatacor's online database in many applications. Through MDdatacor, we can electronically search our patient charts to support initiatives such as: practice quality improvement efforts, which helps our practice assess our clinical performance against nationally established clinical guidelines; conduct clinical research screening and feasibility applications to rapidly find patients for clinical trials based on standardized and customized user criteria; and immediately identify patients requiring changes to their care because of new therapy or drug guidelines.

"MDdatacor has significantly improved our practice's research efforts. We can customize inclusion and exclusion criteria with MDdatacor's research applications for rapid, accurate identification of pre-screened research patients. Now, rather than manually pulling charts to determine whether patients are eligible for clinical trials and studies, we can instantly identify potential research candidates from our electronic database. This enhances our research coordinators' ability to pre-fill studies, many of which are competitively enrolling, and creates a faster and more productive research revenue stream for the practice. An added plus is that through their relationships with leading pharmaceutical and medical device firms, MDdatacor brings many new research opportunities to our group," says Langley.