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Sharecare Announces the Acquisition of PKC Corporation

Sharecare office

Atlanta – June 18, 2012 – Sharecare®, the health and wellness social network co-founded by Jeff Arnold and two-time Emmy® Award-winning television host, Dr. Mehmet Oz, today announced its acquisition of PKC Corporation, a leading developer of healthcare decision support software that empowers patients and providers with individualized medical knowledge. PKC, privately held and headquartered in Burlington, Vermont, was founded by Dr. Lawrence L. Weed, known as the father of the problem-oriented medical record (POMR) and the subjective, objective, assessment, and plan (SOAP) progress notes. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Sharecare’s dynamic social technology platform, together with PKC’s clinical knowledge management system, will bring evidence-based medicine to patients and providers and enable clinically informed communications, helping to secure Sharecare’s leadership position in the emerging health and wellness social media market. PKC’s perfected techniques for methodically reviewing medical literature and populating its medical database with the information necessary to draw real-time and accurate connections between symptoms, conditions and treatments can potentially transform the physicianpatient encounter. Additionally, the PKC medical database is designed to support important “meaningful use” requirements associated with producing a care plan and providing patient education.

The PKC system will be integrated into Sharecare’s platform providing the healthcare providers sociallyenabled on Sharecare with a powerful decision support technology that allows them to instantly develop a differential diagnosis or comprehensive management plan for any patient. Consumers on Sharecare will have access to a unique evidence-based digital assessment tool and the ability to access these results and forward to any physician they choose, saving the physician time and improving the quality of the encounter. Later this year, the integrated platform will introduce a “smart search” technology which will deliver a next generation of clinical healthcare search results along with individualized research paths for both patients and providers.

“This acquisition will provide the clinical knowledge backbone behind every facet of our rapidly evolving platform. PKC will add transparent best-practice science to each of our fundamental goals of information, action, and support,” said Jeff Arnold, Chairman and CEO of Sharecare. “PKC technology will assure that Sharecare providers have the best information support available and a revolutionary patient communication system that will optimize their busy appointment schedule. This is a key strategic step that advances our business model and keeps Sharecare on the cutting-edge of healthcare innovation.”

“From the inception of PKC, we have strived to refine our technologies for delivering targeted just-intime knowledge to patients and providers at the location and moment of care,” said Howard Pierce, CEO of PKC. “In Sharecare, we have now found the ideal partner and platform for affecting a far better patient-provider interface at massive scale. After 20 years of watching health IT expand the capabilities of the business side of medicine, from billing to record keeping, it will be rewarding to help finally bring the best of medical science into the trenches of everyday medical encounters.”

About Sharecare

Launched in 2010 and based in Atlanta, GA, Sharecare is an interactive, social Q & A platform that allows people to ask, learn and act upon questions of health and wellness. Created by Jeff Arnold and Dr. Mehmet Oz, in partnership with Harpo Studios, Remark Media (NASDAQ: MARK), Sony Pictures Television, and Discovery Communications, the company’s innovative approach provides the consumer access to a wide array of health and wellness experts ranging from hospitals to doctors, specialists to non-profits, to healthcare companies and active health consumers, creating a thriving community where healthcare knowledge is built, shared and put into practice.

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