MANAGED CARE February 2008. ©MediMedia USA
Most technological changes in publishing go on behind the scenes. A patient may find himself swallowing a new pill, or stretched out in some novel imaging machine, but a magazine reader sees the same magazine, more or less, that he saw years ago. New printing technologies, improved tools for designing pages, advances in how we gather information — these are not obvious, but they have been evolving in the background.
Now for some foreground action: We have just introduced a new, additional format for Managed Care. It looks just like the familiar one, but you will experience major differences. It is our digital edition. The print edition is not going away; it will remain just as you know it. But there are good reasons to prefer the electronic edition, which makes use of Nxtbook technology and has many conveniences for the reader:
- Click on any URL anywhere in the magazine and go directly to that Web page
- Click on the title of any article on the cover or in the table of contents and go directly to that article
- Search for any string of characters
- Make and save notes with the article that you are reading
- Instantly e-mail links to any article to an associate to read
- Get more information about advertised products by clicking on an ad
- Save the magazine file to your desktop for offline reading
- Print any or all pages
Since the mid-1990s, we have posted our articles on our free Web site, www.managedcaremag.com [1]. Anyone may visit that site and view an html version of any article. But the new edition is different from our archives. You view a complete copy of an issue on your computer screen, and it looks just like the magazine. In fact, the production process is exactly the same. We prepare special high-resolution files for our commercial printer, and we also give those files to Nxtbook, which converts them into the digital edition. Why not take advantage of this neat technology?
Speed and convenience
You can still turn pages one by one, as with the printed magazine, but we make extensive use of hyperlinks. After you register (free) for the electronic edition, you will get a monthly e-mail message with a link to the new issue. If you want to try it out right now, open www.managedcaremag.com/nxtbook [2]. You’ll have to copy that link into your browser, so we made it short.
Here’s something you can do you would never do with the printed magazine: Search through every single word in the issue for something. Does this issue have anything on WellPoint, imaging, Pfizer, or disease management? You’ll know in an instant.
Or you are reading an article on physician income and you encounter a long, long Web address in a reference — and you know how long they can be. You might not make the effort when reading the physical magazine, but with MANAGED CARE’s digital edition, just click and be transported to the Web page. No effort, no lost time, no irritation.
I hope you find this new edition as reader-friendly as I do.