The Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists, AdvancingIn and rxBriefCase
team up to provide online education.

TORONTO , Jan. 6 /CNW/ - The Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists (CSHP), AdvancingIn and rxBriefCase are pleased to announce a new partnership to provide online education and support for both the members of CSHP and all hospital-based healthcare professionals.

Slated to launch in February 2010 , this new resource (www.AdvancingIn.com) will provide free, accredited and interactive continuing education and will be available to all Canadian health care professionals. Courses developed by CSHP will be promoted through rxBriefCase.com, Canada's leading provider of pharmacist education.

Myrella Roy, Executive Director of CSHP, notes: "CSHP is very pleased to have established this partnership with rxBriefCase and AdvancingIn. We recognize the distance learning needs of our members and online learning is a terrific opportunity for us to add value."

In the past five years health care professionals have shifted towards using online sources of information. This shift has been significant and universal: 95% of health professionals now use the internet for professional reasons. Seventy percent now access the internet at least daily and spend 8 - 12 hours per week online. In the past twelve months, rxBriefCase.com has hosted over 60,000 online education sessions for Canadian pharmacists.

"We have had many requests from rxBriefCase learners for hospital-focused programs, so we are very excited about our partnership with CSHP. Among our initial planned programming, we will adapt several sessions from the Professional Practice Conference later this month to post online. With our audience of over 30,000 online, we are expecting to take the participation levels for each program into the thousands," said Cynthia Hastings-James, President of rxBriefCase Inc.

The Partners:

rxBriefCase and AdvancingIn are part of the mdBriefCase Inc Group. mdBriefCase has been providing online information resources for Canadian health care professionals since 2002. Health care professionals must register to have access to the services, and mdBriefCase learners now constitute the largest multi-disciplinary healthcare professional community in Canada with;

    
    -   46,000 physicians composed of both family physicians, specialists and
        nurse practitioners
    -   30,000 pharmacists composed of both community pharmacists and
        hospital pharmacists
    -   14,000 allied health care professionals composed of nurses,
        dietitians, diabetes educators, respiratory technicians etc.
    

CSHP is the national voice of pharmacists committed to the advancement of safe, effective medication use and patient care in hospitals and related health care settings. CSHP supports over 3,100 members through advocacy, education, information sharing, development of standards, facilitation of research, and recognition of excellence.

For further information: Myrella Roy, Executive Director, CSHP, [phone], ext. 225, [email protected], www.cshp.ca; Cynthia Hastings-James, President, rxBriefCase, [phone] ext. 221, [email protected], http://www.rxBriefCase.com