Medical professional website Doctors.net.uk and magazine publisher Emap Inform have joined forces share content and joint-branded activity.

The agreement between Emap, publishers of Health Service Journal and Nursing Times, and Doctors.net.uk, aims to create a dialogue about patient care between the UK public sector and the healthcare industry for the first time.

The deal is being described by Emap and Doctors.net.uk as a “major step forward” for organisations which have had to treat doctors, nurses and healthcare managers as discrete groups and engage with them through separate communications programmes.

Doctors.net.uk has a membership of 170,000 doctors, with 50,000 of them accessing the network every week and provides clinical content including online education, conference highlights, user-generated content and discussion fora.

Health Service Journal and hsj.co.uk are regularly read by over 100,000 decision-makers in healthcare while Nursing Times’ nursingtimes.net it is the largest nursing community in the UK.

Richard Adams, chief executive of Doctors.net.uk, said the deal was a response to demand from clients wanting to undertake fully integrated communications or market research programmes, “We can now simultaneously engage with doctors, nurses and healthcare managers in vitally important areas such as disease management, care pathways and new treatments.”

Claudia Arney, group managing director of EMAP Inform added, “This agreement with Doctors.net.uk allows us to deliver a more complete offering to all our clients involved in health care delivery at what is a demanding and difficult time for many organisations.”

Arney said that Emap Inform was also developing training, research, data, and communications tools jointly with Doctors.net.uk designed to support and sustain their public and private sector healthcare clients through a period of significant change.