KENILWORTH, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Merck (NYSE:MRK), known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, today announced the launch of ILÚM Health Solutions, which provides enterprise-wide disease management tools and services to enable improved outcomes for patients with infectious diseases, such as sepsis and pneumonia, while supporting antimicrobial stewardship initiatives. ILÚM operates independently from Merck’s pharmaceutical and vaccine products businesses as part of Merck’s Healthcare Services & Solutions (HSS) group.

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“We are pleased to offer ILÚM in the United States as a way to strategically partner with health systems to fight infectious diseases and combat the threat of antimicrobial resistance,” said Guy Eiferman, managing director, HSS. “It is an important step for our Healthcare Services and Solutions business, and complements Merck’s company-wide efforts to develop and deliver innovative approaches to address some of today’s most pressing health issues.”

ILÚM Insight™ – ID leverages data within existing hospital IT systems to promote optimal decision making and appropriate use of antimicrobials through its clinical decision support (CDS) system and Command Center (an intuitive data dashboard). These solutions enable case monitoring and prioritization—on an individual and aggregate level based on disease state—and promote early recognition of infectious diseases, appropriate interventions, and adherence to evidence-based clinical pathways. They also provide automated outcomes reporting that is configured to hospital-specific initiatives to track quality program performance.

In 2015, ILÚM initiated a collaboration with East Jefferson General Hospital (EJGH), a 424-bed general medical and surgical hospital in Metairie, La., to pilot ILÚM’s CDS system with an initial focus on improving the impact of the hospital’s quality program for sepsis care improvement. Sepsis is a potentially life-threatening complication of an infection, resulting in 750,000 deaths in the United States and more than $20 billion in aggregate costs annually, with studies demonstrating that hospitals spend approximately $34,000 caring for each patient with severe sepsis.

“East Jefferson General Hospital has a strong commitment to the early recognition and management of sepsis, which are critical to survival,” said Raymond DeCorte, chief medical officer, EJGH. “We are partnering with ILÚM as part of an ongoing, hospital-wide initiative targeting sepsis quality improvement, which includes multi-disciplinary departmental collaborations and sponsorship from administration and medical leadership. This innovative solution has helped us to identify patients with sepsis faster, care for them better and reduce the use of critical hospital resources. We look forward to continuing to work with ILÚM to fight infection and support our antimicrobial stewardship initiatives.”

Preliminary results from the EJGH pilot were presented at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 28th Annual National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care in December 2016. Data showed that with ILÚM’s CDS system, clinicians at EJGH improved their identification of patients with severe sepsis and achieved high adherence rates to the hospital’s guideline-based sepsis care pathway. Comparing data from twelve months prior (control group, May 2014 to April 2015) to twelve months after (study group, September 2015 to August 2016) the ILÚM CDS implementation, there was significant improvement in clinical outcomes and reduction in utilization of healthcare resources. Among patients with all sepsis types, a reduction in hospital length-of-stay (7.11 to 6.81 days; p=0.05) was observed. Among patients with severe sepsis, significantly fewer patients developed hospital-onset shock in the study group compared to the control group (19 percent vs. 35 percent; p=0.006).

“The ILÚM team is focused on helping hospitals improve quality and optimize care by working with doctors, nurses, quality managers, pharmacists and hospital leadership every step of the way,” said Dr. Brandon Palermo, executive director and chief medical officer, HSS. “We are pleased with the results achieved to date at EJGH, and look forward to presenting additional results, including mortality data, at future healthcare conferences.”

About ILÚM Health Solutions

ILÚM Health Solutions is part of Merck’s Healthcare Services & Solutions (HSS) group, an independent business unit focused on improving the value of care delivered to patients through evidence-based services and solutions. ILÚM Health Solutions is organized and managed independently from Merck’s pharmaceutical products business. For more information about ILÚM Health Solutions, visit www.ILÚMhealthsolutions.com.

About Merck

For over a century, Merck has been a global health care leader working to help the world be well. Merck is known as MSD outside the United States and Canada. Through our prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, and animal health products, we work with customers and operate in more than 140 countries to deliver innovative health solutions. We also demonstrate our commitment to increasing access to health care through far-reaching policies, programs and partnerships. For more information, visit www.merck.com and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Forward-Looking Statement of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, N.J., USA

This news release of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, N.J., USA (the “company”) includes “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of the company’s management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. If underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or risks or uncertainties materialize, actual results may differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements.

Risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to, general industry conditions and competition; general economic factors, including interest rate and currency exchange rate fluctuations; the impact of pharmaceutical industry regulation and health care legislation in the United States and internationally; global trends toward health care cost containment; technological advances, new products and patents attained by competitors; challenges inherent in new product development, including obtaining regulatory approval; the company’s ability to accurately predict future market conditions; manufacturing difficulties or delays; financial instability of international economies and sovereign risk; dependence on the effectiveness of the company’s patents and other protections for innovative products; and the exposure to litigation, including patent litigation, and/or regulatory actions.

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