Amsterdam, January 9, 2006 — Elsevier, a world-leading healthcare and scientific publisher, announced today that it has finalized the acquisition of Health Education Systems Incorporated (HESI), a Houston-based firm that specializes in developing high-quality diagnostic tests for nursing and allied health markets.  A primary objective of HESI products is to provide faculty with the tools to predict how their students will perform on the NCLEX exam, a licensure exam for nursing students.  

HESI, which will continue to be headquartered in Houston with a team of more than 30 employees, focuses on developing products that are recognized as best in market in terms of predictability of student success on the NCLEX exam.  The current product offering includes the HESI Admission Assessment Exam, Specialty Exams, Custom Exams, Review Courses, and the HESI Exit Exam.  

HESI Founder and CEO, Dr. Susan Morrison, said, “HESI products are recognized by nurses in both academic and clinical practice settings as having exceptional outcome predictability, a feature that is highly valued by our clients.  We believe strongly that this partnership with Elsevier provides a good strategic fit that will allow us to leverage Elsevier’s content assets with HESI’s capabilities to create testing products, thereby providing significant value to the health care industry.”  

 “HESI provides high quality products to our customers in the Nursing and Health Professions education market.  Meeting the information and learning needs of nurses and healthcare professionals is core to Elsevier's business and we are very excited by the high caliber product offering that HESI brings,'' said Brian Nairn, CEO of Elsevier Health Sciences.  

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About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. Working in partnership with the global science and health communities, Elsevier’s 7,000 employees in over 70 offices worldwide publish more than 2,000 journals and 1,900 new books per year, in addition to offering a suite of innovative electronic products, such as   ScienceDirect,   MD Consult,   Scopus, bibliographic databases, and online reference works.

Elsevier Health Sciences is home to some of the world’s premier names in health care publishing — Saunders, Mosby, Churchill Livingstone, Butterworth-Heinemann, and Hanley & Belfus—and is comprised of a team of leading publishers dedicated to meeting the information needs of health science professionals.

  Elsevier  is a global business headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and has offices worldwide. Elsevier is part of Reed Elsevier Group plc, a world-leading publisher and information provider. Operating in the science and medical, legal, education and business-to-business sectors, Reed Elsevier provides high-quality and flexible information solutions to users, with increasing emphasis on the Internet as a means of delivery. Reed Elsevier's ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).        

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