Cedara Software Acquires Clinical Information Software Intellectual Property

TORONTO, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cedara Software, a Merge Healthcare company (Nasdaq: MRGE; TSX: MRG) and a leading independent developer of medical software technologies for the global healthcare market, today announced the acquisition of assets of a Paris-based medical software company, Axicare, acquired through court liquidation. Cedara gains exclusive ownership of aXigate, a comprehensive solution for healthcare data and workflow management.

Healthcare facilities around the world struggle to solve medical data and image management issues on a daily basis. Most clinical information management systems operate independently from institution wide Hospital Information Systems (HIS), resulting in islands of information and separate patient databases. Cedara's aXigate technology solves this problem by creating a single comprehensive patient record that can connect and manage data and medical images from existing information systems.

Cedara aXigate(TM) is a leading edge, fully secure, fully web-based solution for patient, medical and clinical process management. Cedara aXigate employs an open architecture, built with XML, Java and AJAX that incorporates information from labs, radiology, the pharmacy and other divergent areas into the hospital database. With components for patient registration, consultation, reporting, prescription, follow-up and codification, Cedara aXigate provides a folder based approach to medical information management, displaying relevant information at the click of a button to different health care professionals. Specialists can utilize Cedara aXigate's variety of modules designed to incorporate clinical content into the patient database: from Oncology to Psychiatry, Radiology, Surgery, Neurology, Anesthesiology, OB/GYN and more. The unique clinical content can then be stored and accessed through a standard interface that provides a comprehensive portrait of medical images, diagnosis and test results. Additional modules can easily be developed by Cedara or its OEM partners using Cedara aXigate Studio, an intuitive toolkit for developers.

In the past 3 years, aXigate was installed in over 25 healthcare facilities in France, including private clinics, care networks and several large public institutions including the University Hospital of Besancon (CHU). Applications of the technology have included clinical data management solutions, Electronic Medical Record (EMR) solutions and Hospital Information Systems (HIS).

"The underlying architecture and approach to information management in aXigate are very impressive," said Jacques Cornet, Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Marketing at Cedara. "This technology will provide a strong foundation on which Cedara can rapidly create new integrated information and image management solutions for areas such as pathology, oncology, biotechnology and clinical trials. For end-users and all of our OEM partners, the addition of this technology to Cedara's portfolio opens the door to a wider array of clinical solutions beyond radiology combining image and information management. Further, this strategic technology acquisition aligns with our overall strategy as Merge Healthcare to combine our core medical imaging technologies with clinical information systems to expand our business into new markets and clinical specialties beyond radiology."

Cedara aXigate and its clinical modules are immediately available to OEM and VAR companies.

Cedara Software is a Merge Healthcare company focused on the development of custom engineered software applications and development tools for the medical imaging OEM and International markets. Cedara software is deployed in hospitals and clinics worldwide and is licensed by many of the world's leading medical device and healthcare information technology companies. Cedara technologies and expertise span all the major digital imaging modalities including computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), digital X-ray, mammography, ultrasound, echo-cardiology, angiography, nuclear medicine, positron emission tomography (PET) and fluoroscopy. Cedara medical imaging offerings are used in all aspects of clinical imaging workflow including the capture of a patient's digital image; the archiving, communication and manipulation of digital images; sophisticated clinical applications to analyze digital images; and the use of imaging in minimally- invasive surgery. For additional information, visit our website at http://www.cedara.com/ .

Merge Healthcare is a market leader in the development and delivery of medical imaging and information management software and services. With over twenty years of leadership in the medical imaging and healthcare information technology markets, Merge Healthcare provides innovative solutions for both OEM and the end-user healthcare markets. We custom engineer clinical and imaging applications and development tools that are on the forefront of medicine and its use of medical imaging for OEM and international customers. We develop innovative medical imaging software solutions that support end-to- end business and clinical workflow for radiology department and specialty practices, imaging centers and hospitals. Our innovative software solutions use leading-edge imaging software technologies that accelerate market delivery for our OEM customers, while our end-user solutions improve our customers' productivity and enhance the quality of patient care they provide. For additional information, visit our website at http://www.merge.com/ .

All trademarks appearing in this release are the property of Cedara Software Corp.

First Call Analyst: FCMN Contact: hstetter@merge.com