Medscape is a web resource for physicians and other health professionals. It features peer-reviewed original medical journal articles, CME (Continuing Medical Education), a customized version of the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE database, daily medical news, major conference coverage, and drug information—including a drug database (Medscape Drug Reference, or MDR) and drug interaction checker. All content in Medscape is available free of charge for professionals and consumers alike, but registration is required.

Founded in New York's Silicon Alley

Silicon Alley

Silicon Alley is a nickname for an area with a concentration of Internet and new media companies in Manhattan, New York City. Originally, the term referred to the cluster of such companies extending from the Flatiron District down to SoHo and TriBeCa along the Broadway corridor, but as the location...

 in May 1995 by SCP Communications, Inc. under the direction of Peter Frishauf

Peter Frishauf

Peter Frishauf, born in 1949, is best known as the founder of Medscape, and SCP Communications, Inc. Frishauf is listed in Richard Saul Wurman’s March, 2002 book, Who’s Really Who as one of the 1,000 most creative people in the U.S....

, Medscape, Inc. had an IPO in September, 1999, trading on NASDAQ

NASDAQ

The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

 under the symbol MSCP (a tip-of-the-hat to its founding company, SCP, and to Netscape

Netscape

Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...

, whose symbol was NSCP). In May, 2000 Medscape merged with another public company, MedicaLogic, Inc. MedicaLogic filed for bankruptcy within 18 months, and sold Medscape to WebMD

WebMD

WebMD is an American corporation which provides health information services. It was founded in 1996 by Jim Clark and Pavan Nigam as Healthscape, later Healtheon, and then acquired WebMD in 1999 to form Healtheon/WebMD...

 in December 2001.

In February, 1999, noted medical editor Dr. George D. Lundberg was hired as the editor-in-chief of Medscape. For 17 years prior to joining Medscape he had served as Editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association

Journal of the American Medical Association

The Journal of the American Medical Association is a weekly, peer-reviewed, medical journal, published by the American Medical Association. Beginning in July 2011, the editor in chief will be Howard C. Bauchner, vice chairman of pediatrics at Boston University’s School of Medicine, replacing ...

. Lundberg served in this role until he was terminated by WebMD in 2008. On January 30, 2009 it was announced that no new articles would be accepted for the Medscape Journal of Medicine, a Medscape journal Lundberg started in 1999.

A comparative analysis of Medscape Drug Reference versus Wikipedia concluded that drug monographs on Medscape Drug Reference were more comprehensive and Wikipedia articles had more errors of omission. That conclusion caught the attention of mainstream media.

History

Medscape was birthed to solve a problem. The problem was that physicians were overwhelmed with information, but straining to access and focus on the knowledge that would actually improve patient care. Medscape's co-founding team saw an opportunity to help solve this problem by:

• Collecting clinically-relevant medical literature from multiple medical publishers
• Filtering the literature from a "who should see this" persective, as opposed to the print "what can we fit in this issue" perspective
• Publishing the literature online in an easy-to-print, easy-to-read, easy-to-access format
• Making it freely available to everyone

Medscape co-founders:

• Peter Frishauf
  Peter Frishauf
  Peter Frishauf, born in 1949, is best known as the founder of Medscape, and SCP Communications, Inc. Frishauf is listed in Richard Saul Wurman’s March, 2002 book, Who’s Really Who as one of the 1,000 most creative people in the U.S....
  
   - CEO
• Stephen E Smith - VP, Editorial, Site Design, Production, Product Development, and Marketing (currently head of Marketing at MDLinx
  MDLinx
  MDLinx is an internet-based service that offers physicians and other healthcare professionals a quick means of staying current with academic literature. The typical medical specialist would have to read 30 to 80 journal articles every day to keep up with the flow of information in his/her specialty...
  
  , another leading physician portal)
• Vincent Keane - Site Design
• William Seitz - Technology
• Gib Veconi - Technology
• Tim Fallon - VP, Sales

External links

• Medscape.com
• Medscape Drug Interaction Checker
• History of Medscape (The First Five Years)
• 10th Anniversary Webcast Video Editorial by Editor George Lundberg, MD
• The Diebold Institute study of New York's Silicon Alley
• RIP: The Medscape Journal of Medicine, an open-access pioneer, stops publishing new papers