I-Flow Corporation and GE Healthcare Announce Strategic Alliance

Business Wire, June 1, 2007

Partnership Aims to Explore Innovative Opportunities for Growth in the Anesthesiology Market

LAKE FOREST, Calif. -- I-Flow Corporation (NASDAQ:IFLO) and GE Healthcare (NASDAQ:GE) announced that they have agreed to form a strategic alliance to conduct clinical trials and explore joint opportunities in the anesthesiology market. This exclusive alliance combines resources between the market-leading supplier of regional anesthesiology infusion pumps -- I-Flow Corporation -- and the market leader in global ultrasound and global compact ultrasound -- GE Healthcare -- to conduct a clinical study on the use of ultrasound for the placement of continuous peripheral nerve blocks. Regional pain management systems are one of the fastest growing areas for ultrasound-guided procedures.

The initial phase of the alliance between I-Flow Corporation and GE Healthcare is based on conducting a multi-center, prospective, randomized clinical study on the use of ultrasound for the placement of continuous peripheral nerve blocks. I-Flow will initiate the clinical study designed to measure the effectiveness of using GE's compact ultrasound products for making nerves easier to find, when I-Flow's ON-Q[R] C-bloc[R] is used.

"Numerous synergies exist between I-Flow and GE Healthcare based on our mutual interest to offer technologically advanced systems that redefine recovery and get patients back to normal faster," said Donald M. Earhart, President and CEO of I-Flow Corporation. "We are committed to continuing to deploy resources against the fastest growing part of our broad ON-Q product line, ON-Q C-bloc, and feel privileged to partner with GE Healthcare in this effort."

GE Healthcare's LOGIQ e is a compact ultrasound machine that is used to assist physicians in visualization of patient anatomy for interventional and surgical procedures, as well as real-time patient evaluations in emergency settings and sports medicine.

About ON-Q

ON-Q is now labeled to significantly reduce pain better than narcotics and to significantly reduce narcotics intake after surgery. ON-Q therapy was recently upheld as a best practice for post-surgical pain relief and its widespread use was encouraged in an independent study published in the prestigious Journal of American College of Surgeons. The large-scale pain relief meta-analysis included 2,141 patients across a wide range of surgical procedures.

ON-Q is a simple yet elegant device that consists of a small balloon pump that holds a local anesthetic (a pain-numbing medicine) and delivers it automatically through a specially designed catheter to provide even distribution of local anesthetic over a wider area, as compared to other catheters, because of its patented wicking capabilities.

Currently, more than 55 studies on the use of ON-Q have been completed and published or presented and more are underway to demonstrate the benefits of ON-Q in additional areas such as reduced infection risk, combination therapies (e.g., local anesthetic and antibiotic mixtures, a combination of a local anesthetic and an anti-inflammatory), pediatrics and chronic pain. In addition, effective January 1, 2007, Medicare recognized the ON-Q therapy as a payable covered benefit and therefore medically necessary. To learn more about the benefits of ON-Q visit www.AskYourSurgeon.com. I-Flow Corporation (www.IFLO.com) designs, develops and markets technically advanced, low cost drug delivery systems and services that are redefining the standard of care by providing life enhancing, cost effective solutions for pain relief.

About I-Flow

I-Flow Corporation (www.IFLO.com) designs, develops and markets technically advanced, low cost drug delivery systems and services that are redefining the standard of care by providing life enhancing, cost effective solutions for pain relief.

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.

GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.