Heartlab earns 2005 Business Development Leadership Award from Frost & Sullivan; Latest market survey names Heartlab the third largest U.S. Cardiology PACS provider with 20.3 percent market share for direct and OEM sales

Business Wire, Oct 17, 2005

WESTERLY, R.I. -- Heartlab, an Agfa company, today announced that it has been awarded the 2005 Business Development Leadership Award by Frost & Sullivan, the international growth consultancy company. The award recognizes Heartlab's ability to perceive and meet consumer needs by successfully developing and introducing products and services and to identify new market segments to expand the existing customer base.

"In the intensely competitive U.S. Cardiology PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems) environment, Heartlab has consistently anticipated and met the needs of the marketplace," said Katherine Shariq, senior industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "Heartlab's rigorous and ongoing analysis of customer needs and its continuous development and adoption of state of the art analytics, network, storage and IS integration solutions enables it to meet the future needs of its expanding customer base."

In addition, Frost & Sullivan's 2005 survey of the U.S. Cardiology PACS Market showed Heartlab as the third largest provider of Cardiology PACS solutions in the U.S. in 2004. With 17.8 percent for direct sales and 2.5 percent for indirect OEM sales (through its parent company, Agfa), Heartlab has increased its share of the $166 million U.S. market by more than eight percent from 2002, the last year that Frost & Sullivan surveyed the market. "As the market continues to evolve, Heartlab has emerged as the only viable modality independent solution provider for Cardiology information systems," said Robert Petrocelli, Heartlab's CEO. "As the market has revealed in other healthcare areas, there is a trend to consolidate until there are three or four potential suppliers of a given technology. Heartlab, now the Cardiology Business Unit for Agfa's HealthCare Business Group, is well positioned to grow market share beyond 20 percent in the US and expand market share in other global markets. The cardiology market will continue to evolve worldwide, and the companies with small market shares will not survive."

Heartlab is the leading independent provider of Cardiology PACS in the Frost & Sullivan survey. Its systems support all vendor modalities, which means that cardiology departments are not locked into a single-vendor purchasing decision. Heartlab's information and image management systems are installed in more than 300 leading cardiology centers in the U.S. With the April 2005 acquisition of the company by Agfa, Heartlab will benefit from greater global resources and market reach, growing its customer base worldwide by integrating with existing Agfa installations and expanding into markets already served by Agfa's global business.

Established in 1994, Heartlab has consistently been recognized as one of America's fastest-growing private companies by Inc. magazine and ranked number 489 on Deloitte's ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies in North America. Both organizations highlighted the company's revenue growth of more than 337 percent over the past five years and recognized its success in creating, promoting and installing its proprietary technology among an expanding customer base.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company's industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services, and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, and the investment community by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics. For more information, visit www.frost.com.

About Agfa

The Agfa-Gevaert Group is one of the world's leading imaging and information technology companies. Agfa develops, manufactures and markets analog and digital systems for the graphic industry and for healthcare.

Agfa's headquarters are in Mortsel, Belgium. The company is active in 40 countries and has agents in another 100 countries throughout the world. Together they achieved a turnover of 3,762 million Euros (or US$ 4,677 million(a)) in 2004. Agfa's HealthCare business group supplies hospitals and other healthcare centers with state-of-the-art systems for the capturing, processing and managing of diagnostic images and with IT solutions that integrate the imaging workflow into the overall hospital operations across departmental disciplines.

In addition, Agfa is a leader in the fast growing market of IT systems that span the entire healthcare enterprise and through which healthcare facilities become more efficient and effective, with improved patient outcomes.

For more information on Agfa, visit www.agfa.com.

(a) 1US$ = 0.804281 Euro

About Heartlab

Heartlab is the global leader in digital image and information management for cardiology. The company's networks are installed in more than 300 leading heart centers in North America and Japan, giving cardiologists rapid access to imaging exam and report information and providing robust protection for critical patient data. Connecting over 700 cardiac catheterization labs and over 600 echocardiography machines, Heartlab systems process more than 1.5 million cases annually in key academic and research centers such as Johns Hopkins, regional tertiary-care centers such as St. Francis-Roslyn, and multi-site health systems including the University of Virginia Medical Center and Florida's Lee Memorial and Health First.