Merck’s Fight Against Infectious Disease Goes Digital with Launch of ILÚM Health Solutions

February 16, 2017 8:00 am ET

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.

“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.

The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any
forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information,
future events or otherwise. Additional factors that could cause results
to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking
statements can be found in the company’s 2015 Annual Report on Form 10-K
and the company’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) available at the SEC’s Internet site (www.sec.gov).