LIFETIME MEDICAL TV MERGING WITH PYRAMED INTERACTIVE

LIFETIME MEDICAL TV MERGING WITH PYRAMED INTERACTIVE system to provide physician continuing education and other medical programming in an interactive format. The program will be launched in the first quarter of 1994 and operate as a pilot project through April 1994. The move takes effect Aug. 1. At that time, Lifetime Medical Television's parent company, Lifetime Television, will replace its current physician-oriented Sunday programs with "programming targeted to women," Lifetime Television said in a July 21 announcement. Pyramed is a joint venture between Lifetime and Interactive Health Network, described as "a producer and distributor of interactive programs for health care professionals." The merged entity will be called Pyramed Networks, Inc., the Physicians' Interactive Network. Lifetime Medical Television President David Moore will become president of Pyramed and bring several LMT senior officals with him. Pyramed CEO John Hayes will remain in that post; Hayes founded Interactive Health Network in 1986. The pilot project will target family physicians, internists and cardiologist and will have six pharmaceutical companies as sponsors. Lifetime had worked with 11 specialty groups to develop programming. The three specialties for the Pyramed pilot project were selected based on relationships with three physician groups - - the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians and the American College of Cardiology -- and sponsor interest. Pyramed aims to sign up 300 physicians by January and 1,500 by April 1994. During the pilot stage, participating physicans will pay a monthly fee of about $25 but be provided with most of the needed equipment to use the "compuTV" system, generally in their homes. Components of the system will include a computer terminal, phone and cable TV links, CD ROM equipment, a computer "mouse" and a camera and microphone component that can act as a video phone. At their convenience, physicians can access a variety of programs and informational sources, including daily medical news; continuing education programs; National Library of Medicine databases, medical journals and other reference material; and medical practice management information. Physicians will have other options such as receiving or sending information to the specialty societies. The system will also have the capability to broadcast live symposia with up to 250 physician participants. Commercial sponsors will be allotted 100 megabytes to carry their "sponsor communications" and can use various formats including live motion video, still picture with audio or text. Some of the sponsor communications will be "nonelective," but product-specific information, which Pyramed calls "interactive drug consultations," will be elective. Pyramed officials described the product-specific information as akin to product detailing. While review of this information is elective, the nonelective spots could be designed to attract viewers to the drug consultations. Physicians reviewing the interactive drug consultations can request a product sample or sales rep visit, and that information will be immediately transmitted to the manufacturer. Sponsor communications will be stored on hard drive and pulled up in a random chronological sequence at appropriate times during programming rather than tied to specific programs. The design is intended in part to avoid situations such as the airing of a manufacturer's spot air during a program that includes discussion of an unlabeled use of a company product. However, the design will allow some tailoring, or "micromarketing," of the sponsor communications to individual physician participants. Pyramed and the sponsors will review the pilot test after April 1995.