SeeBeyond Unveils Blueprint for National Healthcare Infrastructure; Se

    Business Editors/High-Tech Editors/Medical Editors
    HIMSS 2005 Annual Conference

    DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 15, 2005--With the recent announcement of a strategic initiative outlining the adoption of a nationwide interoperable health information network, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has publicly declared its dedication to enabling electronic health records (EHR) for Americans. In support of this initiative, several programs have been introduced including the National Health Information Infrastructure (NHII) and the Centers for Disease Control's Public Health Information Network (PHIN). With an overarching objective of establishing a national network of interoperable systems for healthcare delivery, these programs will be the driving force in the adoption of solutions such as unified single patient views, longitudinal patient medical records and the electronic prescribing of medication. With a 15-year track record in the healthcare space, SeeBeyond (Nasdaq:SBYN) supports these efforts in driving collaboration between the private and public sectors to promote data standards, interoperability, regional health information exchanges and product certification.
    Many healthcare organizations today are struggling to achieve a unified view of patient information that is typically stored across disparate, product-oriented systems yet needed by medical practitioners in remote medical offices, emergency rooms, laboratories, hospitals, pharmacies and other delivery sites. SeeBeyond has enabled the seamless flow of information for approximately 4,000 healthcare sites worldwide, and is now providing a critical piece in the enablement of electronic patient records on both a tactical and strategic level in the midst of this fundamental change.
    "Today's healthcare organizations must undertake a true clinical transformation, supported by the ability to leverage the multimillion Dollar investments made in existing legacy IT systems," said Wayne Owens, general manager of Healthcare, SeeBeyond. "This transformation can only be achieved through complete interoperability, and SeeBeyond offers unparalleled technology solutions through our composite application solution offerings. Interoperability across disparate healthcare systems is a cornerstone of healthcare delivery in the 21st Century, and SeeBeyond is perfectly poised to make it happen."
    Offering a comprehensive framework for the collection, management and exchange of public health data, SeeBeyond enables the creation of new business processes leveraging existing infrastructures through Service-based Packaged Composite Applications (PCA's). Based on a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and powered by the SeeBeyond ICAN 5 Suite to enable the integration of clinical processes across departments, these solutions allow healthcare organizations to meet today's business challenges associated with regulatory requirements and patient safety, bridging gaps between departmental systems and providing healthcare organizations the means to realize dramatic cost savings while leveraging existing technology assets.
    "With our extensive history in providing technology solutions to the healthcare market, it has always been our strategic vision to integrate healthcare information on a national scale," said Jim Demetriades, founder and CEO of SeeBeyond. "This vision has become a reality with initiatives such as the UK's NHS National Programme for IT. SeeBeyond is now providing the foundation for integrating entire countries -- not just companies -- and is at the forefront of changing the way healthcare information is shared and managed on a global basis."
    The need for a nationwide infrastructure is not limited to the U.S., in fact, national healthcare initiatives have already been adopted across the globe to improve access to electronic health records to enhance patient safety, deliver more timely treatment and to streamline the billing process. Several countries leading the charge include The United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Ireland, France and Australia -- each of which have been leveraging the technology and healthcare expertise from SeeBeyond.

    U.K.'s NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE (NHS) - Largest National eMPI

    Representing one of the largest Master Patient Index (MPI) initiatives in the world, the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) will manage nearly 50 million members across 250 hospitals and 600,000 medical practitioners, and encompasses 10,000 systems across 40,000 sites. In January 2004, SeeBeyond announced the selection with British Telecommunications (BT) as a National Application Service Provider (NASP) for the NHS. BT will leverage the SeeBeyond ICAN 5 Suite to design, deliver and manage a national patient record database and transactional messaging service. In addition, SeeBeyond was awarded a follow-on, 10 year contract to support BT's role as the London Local Service Provider (LSP) for the NHS Care Records Service, followed by selection to support CSC's role as LSP for the North West and West Midlands region of England. All in all, the contracts represent an opportunity for more than $60 million in revenue to SeeBeyond over the course of the contract life.
    While the UK's NHS initiative is the largest project of its kind in terms of scope, several other countries have successfully implemented similar initiatives with the support of SeeBeyond technology.

    LUXEMBOURG - CRP Henri Tudor Links to HealthNet

    CRP Henri Tudor, a Luxembourg public research centre, is using SeeBeyond to link organizations and applications within HealthNet Luxembourg -- a Secure Telematic Network for Healthcare Professionals in the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg. Commenting on the selection of the technology, Ortwin Donak, Project Manager for CRP Henri Tudor, said "We were looking for an integration platform that would give us a secure, flexible, standards-based integration framework with complete flexibility and reliability of systems to help reduce I/T costs and leverage our investment in existing systems. By providing the link into HealthNet, SeeBeyond will enable fast integration to, and real-time collaboration with, healthcare partners in a fraction of the time and cost than would otherwise be necessary."

    IRELAND - The General Medical Services Board Deploys Patient Matching

    In Ireland, the payment of fees for services provided to patients by general practitioners, community pharmacies, optometrists and dentists is handled by the GMS (Payments) Board. With more than 2.2 million members of the community exempt from paying charges through various state-funded schemes, the Board processes more than 40 million transactions from 5,000 primary care contractors. Leveraging SeeBeyond, GMS has now deployed a sophisticated cross-matching system that can identify clients who are registered several times with different schemes and thus have different patient identifiers. The solution also supports the use of Ireland's national identifier, the Personal Public Services (PPS) number.
    "By enabling us to build a central client index, SeeBeyond is playing a key role in our efforts to enhance faster processing of payments to primary care contractors. We expect to make substantial cost savings due to the reduction in data re-entry and the duplication of data," said Patrick Burke, General Medical Services (Payments) Board.

    NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA - Establishes Unique Patient Identifier

    New South Wales Health (NSW) is the largest health department in Australia. A Government Action Plan for Health was instituted in New South Wales in 2000, and identified as one of its key recommendations that The Department of Health establish a Unique Patient Identifier for every individual in the State. Leveraging the SeeBeyond platform, New South Wales has enabled healthcare providers to identify with certainty the particular patient they are dealing with, irrespective of where the patient has entered the health system.

    UNITED STATES - Master Patient Index Lays Groundwork for National EHR

    With the pending adoption of a national interoperable health information standard in the U.S., many healthcare organizations are implementing local integrated networks and Regional Health Information Networks (RHINs) to take advantage of the same economies of scale and improved efficiencies offered by automation and interoperability. With a strong customer base in the U.S., SeeBeyond is helping many healthcare organizations elevate their existing infrastructures to new enterprise-wide Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) to take advantage of state-of-the-art interoperability. A basic prerequisite of a RHIN is an enterprise-wide "Single Patient View" of the entire patient population, both past and present. SeeBeyond's Master Person Index solution has the capability of matching and cross-indexing using sophisticated mathematical probabilities across disparate source systems in real time. A sampling of SeeBeyond customers who have successfully implemented this technology include: CareGroup and the University of Pennsylvania, with more than 2.5 million patient records, and New York Presbyterian with more than 7.5 million records. In addition, as New England's largest health plan, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) is leveraging its partnerships with the State of Massachusetts, other Massachusetts payers and the Massachusetts provider networks to share information collaboratively via a RHIN. Utilizing SeeBeyond, BCBSMA is expanding into new channels, improving patient satisfaction and sharing access to legacy systems through an SOA in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost, providing significant competitive advantage.
    As a part of its presence at the 2005 HIMSS Conference taking place this week in Dallas, SeeBeyond will host a roundtable discussion entitled, "Addressing the Challenges in Healthcare with SOA." The discussion will bring together SeeBeyond customers, partners and industry experts with members of the media to share insights on how some of the most pressing business issues for healthcare organizations can be addressed. For more information, please visit the SeeBeyond booth #6427 in the exhibit hall.

    For more information about the U.S. government-sponsored programs mentioned above, please visit the following websites:
    http://www.cdc.gov/phin/index.htm
    http://www.aspe.hhs.gov/sp/nhii/index.html

    About SeeBeyond Composite Application Solutions for Healthcare

    With healthcare funding required to stretch further than ever before, payers and providers can no longer afford to replace foundation systems to support emerging regulations and fundamental business processes. Offering a comprehensive framework for the collection, management and exchange of public health data, SeeBeyond enables the creation of new business processes leveraging existing infrastructures through Composite Application technology. Based on a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and powered by the SeeBeyond ICAN 5 Suite to enable the integration of clinical processes across departments, SeeBeyond offers its flagship composite application, eIndex(TM) Global Identifier, along with the following prototype composite application solutions: Claims Lifecycle Manager (CLM), Patient Bed Management and Business Process Improvement and Workflow (BPIW). For more information about these solutions, please visit www.seebeyond.com/industries/health.asp.

    About SeeBeyond

    Based on 15 years of software innovation and real-world experience in integrating systems across Global 2000 organizations, SeeBeyond (Nasdaq: SBYN) delivers the industry's first integrated composite application network built on a comprehensive integration platform. Beyond eAI, the SeeBeyond(R) Integrated Composite Application Network Suite(TM) helps organizations rapidly assemble and deploy enterprise-scale end-user applications built on existing systems and infrastructure to dramatically improve business operations. SeeBeyond has more than 1,900 customers worldwide. A sampling of SeeBeyond's healthcare customers in the Provider space includes Ascension HealthCare Group, Baylor, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, CareGroup, The Cleveland Clinic, Duke University Health System, Intermountain Healthcare, Kaleida Health System, Kindred Healthcare, Meriter Health Service, Michigan Health System, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Queensland Health, Sharp HealthCare, Sutter Health, Texas Health Resources and UCLA Medical Center. A sampling of SeeBeyond's healthcare customers in the Payer space includes Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Blue Shield of California, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, Blue Cross of Idaho, Coventry Health Care Inc., Horizon BCBS of New Jersey, Group Health Inc., The Regence Group and United Health. For more information, please visit www.seebeyond.com.

    SeeBeyond is a registered trademark of SeeBeyond Technology Corporation in the United States and select foreign countries. SeeBeyond Integrated Composite Application Network Suite is a trademark of SeeBeyond Technology Corporation. The absence of a trademark from this list does not constitute a waiver of SeeBeyond Technology Corporation's intellectual property rights concerning that trademark. All other brands or product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

--30--CRD/sf*

CONTACT: SeeBeyond Kristi Rawlinson, 214-373-1519 krawlinson@seebeyond.com or Blanc & Otus Kristin Reeves, 415-856-5145 kreeves@blancandotus.com

KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA TEXAS TRACK INDUSTRY KEYWORD: MEDICAL TRADESHOW PRODUCT SOURCE: SeeBeyond

Copyright Business Wire 2005