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WikiAnswers.Com Teams With Itamar Medical, Leveraging Online Social Knowledge Platform for Q&A Category on Cardiovascular Health

Posted on: Monday, 17 March 2008, 12:00 CDT

Answers Corporation (NASDAQ: ANSW), creators of the leading answer engine offering Answers.com™ and WikiAnswers.com™, announced today a unique cooperation with the specialists at Itamar Medical, a world leading developer of cardiac diagnostic equipment, who will spearhead the supervision of the new Cardiovascular Health category on WikiAnswers.com. WikiAnswers is Answers Corp's Social Knowledge Q&A site recently ranked by comScore as the #1 fastest growing domain of the top 1,500 in the US in 2007.

In an effort to facilitate the process whereby patients receive the most up-to-date information, Answers Corp. and Itamar Medical will use the WikiAnswers Social Knowledge community platform for facilitating more efficient dialogue between doctors and patients. The companies will leverage the power of the Internet as a global knowledge repository where user-generated content and Social Knowledge groups are among the fastest growing phenomena.

This pioneering partnership aims to disseminate information about cardiovascular disease, the number one cause of death among humans. As the medical field is beginning to accept, the major cardiovascular risk factors (e.g., cholesterol levels) are only part of the process affecting endothelial health. The endothelium is a thin layer of cells internally lining blood vessels and regulating homeostasis. Dysfunction of the endothelium is the gateway to developing atherosclerosis and through it Cardiovascular Disease. Measuring endothelial function is considered a proven method to gauge cardiac health. The discoverers of its involvement in cardiovascular regulation were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1998.

While dozens of highly respected institutions like Harvard University, Mayo Clinic and Framingham, as well as several major pharmaceutical companies, have been investigating Endothelial Dysfunction and its effects on patient health for two decades or so, the news of these major discoveries has yet to reach the public. Accelerating this process is expected to lead to significant advances in prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease.

"To have such a critical section like Cardiovascular Health supervised by a group of doctors involved in revolutionizing the standard of care is simply ideal; our visitors can feel more comfortable with the source of the information they find here," said Jay Bailey, Director of Community Development for WikiAnswers. "While anyone in the community is welcome to ask and answer questions about cardiovascular health, the doctors at Itamar Medical will join the other 225 WikiAnswers Supervisors who keep WikiAnswers content helpful, organized, and clear of vandalism and false or irresponsible postings."

Israel Schreiber, Itamar Medical President and CEO explained their motivation: "Understanding that the Internet is a key repository of global knowledge means that if we want to share important discoveries about Cardiovascular health with a wide audience, we must be active -- or, more importantly, interactive -- participants on the Net. We have a talented staff and an internationally recognized advisory board working on cutting--edge medical research and we are excited to make them available to the community at large via WikiAnswers. We are committed to this new broader education campaign that encourages doctors to share their knowledge with their patients."

"Social media helps companies like Itamar Medical to build stronger brands by allowing them to demonstrate their authoritativeness and expertise in venues that builds trust in them as both experts and peers," said John Blossom, President and Senior Analyst for Shore Communications Inc., a leading content market research and advisory service. "WikiAnswers is an excellent environment to enable such subject matter experts to display their insights in a well-curated knowledge community with strong search engine placement capabilities."

About Itamar Medical Ltd.

Itamar Medical (TASE:ITMR) is dedicated to the research, development and commercialization of a wide range of medical products and services based on PAT (Peripheral Arterial Tone) Technology and innovative, non-invasive measurement technologies in order to improve the quality of healthcare.

Itamar Medical's Endo-PAT2000 solution adds an important dimension to cardiac medicine by enabling physicians to reliably and non-invasively measure endothelial function and identify pathological cases of dysfunction which has now been proven to be a key indicator of identifying patients with high risk of cardiovascular related disease. The company is also the inventor of The Watch-PAT100 product which provides a new screening, diagnostic, treatment assessment and patient follow-up solution for the medical management of sleep-related breathing disorders.

About Answers Corporation

Answers Corporation (NASDAQ: ANSW) owns and operates the award-winning Answers.com, which includes content on over 180 licensed titles from leading publishers such as Houghton Mifflin Company, Barron's, Encyclopedia Britannica, and others; and WikiAnswers.com, the community-generated Social Knowledge Q&A site recently named by comScore as the fastest growing website in 2007.

Answers.com can be launched directly from within Internet Explorer 7, Firefox and Opera browsers, and its service is integrated into sites like The New York Public Libraries' homeworkNYC.org, The New York Times, CBSNews.com and others. Answers.com is also available for mobile devices at mobile.answers.com. For investment information, visit ir.answers.com (answ-p).

Source: Business Wire

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