A new network to deliver drug safety alerts online to U.S. physicians was launched this week, replacing a decades-old system based upon paper and mail.

The Health Care Notification Network, or HCNN, is the result of a three-year collaboration between medical society leaders, liability carriers, health plans, consumer advocacy groups, government leaders and industry, including pharmaceutical companies.

The network is free to all licensed U.S. physicians and is used solely for patient safety alerts, not for advertising or promotion. The HCNN will also be available for rapid communication with physicians in the event of emergency public health or bio-terror events.

"Relying on paper-based U.S. mail and weeks of delay to deliver time-urgent patient safety alerts to doctors in 2008 is indefensible and unsafe," said Nancy Dickey, MD, former American Medical Association president and chairman of the iHealth Alliance, the not-for-profit board that governs HCNN. "After a few years of work with the FDA and many other partners, we are finally moving from the paper age into the Internet age in terms of patient safety alerts."

Dickey said online enrollment would require only "two minutes" of a physician's time, and the benefits would be immediate. She said HCNN would ensure rapid delivery of important alerts to physicians and would lead to improvements in patient safety and office efficiency.

San Francisco-based Medem, Inc. will provide network operations for HCNN.

"The majority of U.S. liability carriers are asking their insured physicians to enroll today in the HCNN because delivering product recalls and warnings immediately online has the potential to directly improve patient safety, reduce malpractice claims and ultimately decrease malpractice insurance premiums," said David Troxel, MD, an iHealth Alliance board member and medical director for The Doctors Company, the largest U.S. physician-owned liability carrier.

The mission of the iHealth Alliance, which governs HCNN, is to protect the interests of patients and providers as healthcare moves online. The iHealth Alliance board credited FDA leadership for making the HCNN a reality, as the FDA recently updated its guidance for the pharmaceutical and device industry and now actively encourages the use of online networks for patient safety alerts.

HCNN organizers noted that surveys of practicing physicians reveal that more than 90 percent of physicians want drug safety alerts sent online instead of by mail, and more than half wish to have a copy of the alerts also sent online to office staff.

"Letters to healthcare providers often are screened by one or more 'gatekeepers' and may not reach the intended recipients - the providers who need the drug information for treating patients," said Janet Woodcock, MD, deputy commissioner for Scientific and Medical Programs at CMO and acting director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at FDA. "Gatekeepers often discard these important paper-based alerts as 'junk mail.'"

Manufacturers that will use the new online network are funding HCNN and currently pay for mail delivery of paper-based alerts. Johnson & Johnson and the pharmaceutical industry group PhRMA have been industry leaders on the project.

"We believe this system will provide a timely, effective and efficient system to distribute important medical safety information to America's physicians," said Adrian Thomas, MD, chief safety officer and global head of benefit risk management at Johnson & Johnson.

Numerous health plans have also participated in the HCNN effort, including Aetna and the Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), the parent company of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, Illinois, Oklahoma and New Mexico.

"Making healthcare safer is critically important to improving the quality of life for patients" said Troyen Brennan, MD, Aetna's chief medical officer. "Success will depend on collaborative partnerships such as the HCNN and leveraging technology to deliver information in ways that enable doctors to take more timely actions."

Paul Handel, MD, chief medical officer of HCSC, said his company is "aggressively reaching out" to its physicians to encourage their enrollment in the HCNN.

Registration on HCNN is available immediately for U.S. physicians at www.hcnn.net, and organizers say tens of thousands of physicians have already enrolled as a result of outreach efforts from liability carriers.