Centricity Perinatal Solution and AirStrip OB

[Admin]

GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), announced today an exclusive agreement with MP4 Solutions (MP4) to deliver the Centricity Perinatal Solution in conjunction with AirStrip OB(R), a state-of-the-art technology that allows obstetricians to use their PDAs (personal digital assistants) or Smart Phones to remotely access fetal heart tracings, maternal contraction patterns, and other critical, virtual real-time data from labor & delivery units. This breakthrough technology will be showcased next week at the 2006 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference & Exhibition in San Diego.

Until now, physicians could only access information about the progress of a patient in the labor & delivery department remotely via a phone conversation with a nurse or by using a computer with Internet access-- a significant limitation for the demanding schedule of obstetricians.

"AirStrip OB allows me to stay connected to my patients even if I can't be at their bedside," said Dr. George Branning, MD of Baylor hospital in Dallas, Texas. "I no longer have to rely on tenuous Internet connections or potentially incomplete verbal explanations of my patients' progress. Instead, I can now access critical patient information directly from a handheld device and continue to monitor my patient's progress during their labor, regardless of my location."

By interfacing exclusively with GE's Centricity Perinatal system, AirStrip OB provides obstetricians with the ability to retrieve current and historical patient data, including exams, vital signs, and patient census lists. This software displays the current waveform data coming from Centricity Perinatal as it would be seen on a monitor in labor & delivery units.

"Our relationship with MP4 demonstrates GE's continued commitment to personalized healthcare by providing transformational medical and information technologies to bring our customers closer to their patients," said Vishal Wanchoo, president and CEO of GE Healthcare Integrated IT Solutions.

Developed using Microsoft's ".NET" framework, AirStrip OB incorporates Smart Client Technology on Smart Phone/PDA devices running Microsoft(R) Window Mobile 2003 and higher. Airstrip OB is designed to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and utilizes some of the strictest internet/wireless security measures available today.