Mount Desert Island Hospital Ensures Patient Safety with Healthcare Information and 2D Bar Code Imaging Solution; Hand Held Products Designs Patient Wristband Solution and Supplies 4600 2D Imagers to Comply with ''5 Rights'' Initiative

Business Wire, June 5, 2006

SKANEATELES FALLS, N.Y. -- Hand Held Products, Inc., a leader in image-based data collection solutions for the healthcare industry, announced that Mount Desert Island (MDI) Hospital has replaced conventional laser scanners with 4600 2D imagers as a critical component of the hospital's patient safety information system. MDI Hospital is an acute care facility based in Maine.

The initial MDI Hospital patient safety system used linear bar codes on patient wristbands and laser scanners for reading wristbands and medication labels within the pharmacy as well as at the point-of-care.

With the assistance of Hand Held Products, MDI Hospital implemented an innovative patient wristband solution using 2D Aztec bar codes coupled with Hand Held Products' 4600 2D image readers.

The new solution is already delivering impressive patient safety metrics, reducing the number of weekly incidences of medication "no reads" from approximately 100 to less than three. With the old laser-based system and 5 Rights compliance metrics, the percentage of successfully completed wristband and medication bar code transactions was running about 15%. The new 2D Imaging-based solution has improved transaction success rate to 70%. By reducing the number of misreads and making compliance easier, nurses are able to deliver safer and more efficient care without having to worry about medication errors.

"Over the past several years, MDI Hospital has been motivated by the national trend to becoming 'all electronic' and we invested in a bar code-based point-of-care patient system in 2004," said Jeanne Fortier, VP of Clinical Services, MDI Hospital. "However, with the original laser-based system, our nurses were unable to reliably use the safety features of MDI's information system because scanning the linear bar codes on the patient wristbands was such an arduous process. And, we were further challenged in the fact that the laser scanners could not read the newer generation of 2D codes on incoming medications in our pharmacy."

The move to an electronic medical record system has also included the recent implementation of "ChartLink," a component for the hospital's information system that provides a Windows Web-based portal to easily display all patient information that has been captured in the system.

"For the critical patient wristband portion of a 5 Rights patient safety system, healthcare systems integrators are often deploying conventional linear bar codes and laser scanners. As the experience of MDI Hospital will attest, linear bar codes on wristbands and laser scanners cannot deliver the ease of use required for efficiently reading linear and 2D codes at the point-of-care," said Don Flynn, VP Imaging Systems, Hand Held Products. "Our innovation of using 'repeated' 2D Aztec codes for wristbands and state-of-the-art 2D image readers proves to be a much better real world patient safety solution."

"Our nursing staff is extremely happy with the new 2D-based Hand Held Products solution and as June is patient safety month, it is fitting to currently have the 4600s in use," continued Fortier. "From a workflow standpoint, the 4600s have given our staff the confidence that MDI Hospital is offering its patients a robust and effective commitment to patient safety. Our institutional goal is to be 90% compliant on the medication we scan and then administer - with solutions like this, I'm confident we'll achieve this."

About Hand Held Products

With headquarters in Central New York, Hand Held Products is a worldwide leading manufacturer of image based data collection systems for mobile, wireless, and transaction processing solutions. Through its proprietary Adaptus(TM) Imaging Technology platform, Hand Held Products is dedicated to delivering innovative imaging solutions, reliability and durability to the point-of-care. Hand Held Products is a privately held company and is represented in every major market and geographic region of the world. To find out how Hand Held Products can help you at the point-of-sale, on the sales floor, in the warehouse or on the delivery truck, call us at 1-800-582-4263. Or visit us at handheld.com.