Press Releases

Consumers in New York and North Carolina to Participate in
Pilot Tests of National Health Information Network
 
NEWTOWN, PA – December 19, 2006 – A select number of people in the United States will soon be experiencing healthcare of the future, a future expected to be shared by people nationwide by 2014.  In a pilot program beginning this month, 75 people in North Carolina and New York state will quite literally have in their hands the power to carry their personal medical information from physician to pharmacist to insurer to home, via software products developed by CapMed, a division of Bio-Imaging Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: BITI).

 This pilot program is part of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN), a prototype network being built under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) to facilitate the secure sharing of information between hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies and physicians.  The pilot – known as the “Consumer Empowerment Use Case” – aims to demonstrate how to provide consumers with a means of securely, electronically accessing information that is important to their health and wellness. 

 After completing a registration that confirms their identity, patient volunteers for this pilot project will be able to download their medication history into a customized Personal Health Record, or PHR.  Patient volunteers will be from the Fishkill/Taconic region of New York and from the Research Triangle Park-area and Rockingham County, both in N.C.
CapMed is collaborating on the pilot with IBM and SureScripts, the nation’s largest provider of electronic prescribing services.  This project represents the first-ever implementation in which a patient can electronically and securely access a consolidated record of their prescription history from participating pharmacies in their community.  Pharmacies collaborating on this pilot program include Brooks Eckerd, Kerr Drug, Rite Aid, Stop & Shop and Walgreens. Patient volunteers can download medication history data directly into their CapMed PHR.

 “There are millions of people in this country whose lives depend on properly managing their medications,” said Kevin Hutchinson, president and CEO of SureScripts.  “Providing these and millions of other patients with secure access to their medication history represents an enormous opportunity for patient empowerment.  This pilot will provide practical insights on how medication history is accessed, used, updated and, most importantly, valued by the patients themselves.  It is the latest example of how the nation’s community pharmacies are helping to build an electronic backbone to support the exchange of critical information between patients, physicians and pharmacists.

According to IBM, CapMed was chosen for this project because of its leadership in standards-based data exchange, coupled with PHR expertise garnered from a 10-year history of providing personal health records for over 600,000 people nationwide.

“IBM has a long history of selecting highly-qualified partners that add significant value to our programs,” said Ginny Wagner, certified executive project manager at IBM.  “As a case in point, CapMed has demonstrated leadership in supporting the secure exchange of electronic healthcare data, and that expertise has helped us to complete the patient-portion of this project in a manner that not only meets the expectations of the NHIN project, but we believe exceeds them.”

“Electronic Personal Health Records have the power to transform the healthcare system, saving the valuable time of physicians and other providers, and helping patients manage their health,” said Wendy Angst, general manager of CapMed.  “When patients cannot easily share up-to-date medical histories, it can lead to costly repetition of examinations and testing.  At worst, it can lead to delayed diagnoses and even death.”
CapMed’s suite of personal health management solutions are driven by CapMed’s award-winning Personal Health Record (PHR), the only hybrid PHR on the market.  This hybrid solution gives consumers multiple and interchangeable solutions to manage and communicate health information, including a portable device (CapMed’s Personal HealthKey) which uses USB technology, the CapMed PHR,  which runs from the desktop, and the Internet-based Online PHR.  For the pilot project, patients will be using the CapMed Personal HealthKey in conjunction with Online PHR.   

“An underlying theme for the NHIN initiative is that empowered and informed consumers will be better able to manage their own healthcare,” said Angst.  “So we have designed a product that has been proven to be easy to use with multiple ways to manage and share information, so as to encourage widespread adoption within this initial trial, and ultimately to support widespread adoption and usage of health management tools.”
 
 
CapMed, A Division of Bio-Imaging Technologies, Inc., is the cornerstone of Bio-Imaging’s Personal Health Management Division.  CapMed is the leading provider of patient outreach solutions for hospitals and healthcare systems, providers’ offices, managed care organizations, and pharmaceutical companies, with more than 600,000 distributed to date. These solutions enable patients to monitor and manage their health, and to improve communications with care providers, ultimately improving outcomes and reducing costs of care and are available in three formats: the portable Personal HealthKey™, Personal Health Record CD-ROM, and the Online PHR. CapMed offers custom development to organizations who want to add unique or proprietary capabilities to the platform. For more information on the CapMed Personal Health Management Solutions, please visit www.CapMed.com or the consumer website, www.CapMedPHR.com. 
 

Certain matters discussed in this press release are “forward-looking statements” intended to qualify for the safe harbors from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.  In particular, the Company’s statements regarding trends in the marketplace and potential future results are examples of such forward-looking statements.  The forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, the consummation and the successful integration of proposed acquisitions, the timing of projects due to the variability in size, scope and duration of projects, estimates made by management with respect to the Company’s financial results, backlog, critical accounting policies, regulatory delays, clinical study results which lead to reductions or cancellations of projects, and other factors, including general economic conditions and regulatory developments, not within the Company’s control.  The factors discussed herein and expressed from time to time in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission could cause actual results and developments to be materially different from those expressed in or implied by such statements.  The forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this press release and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstance.  You should review the Company’s filings, especially risk factors contained in the Form 10-K and the recent form 10-Q.

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