SonoSite Delivers First Customer Shipment of Its Second Decade

Business Wire, May 1, 2008

M-Turbo[TM] Systems Delivered to Emergency Medicine at George Washington University Medical Center

BOTHELL, Wash. -- SonoSite, Inc. (NASDAQ:SONO), the world leader and specialist in hand-carried ultrasound for the point-of-care, said today that it delivered the first customer shipment of its second decade to Keith Boniface, MD, Director of Emergency Ultrasound at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC. SonoSite is celebrating its 10th year as a public company since its spin-off in April 1998.

Just back from teaching at an emergency medicine summit in Beijing, China, Dr. Boniface returned to find his order for two new M-Turbo systems had been delivered earlier in April. "SonoSite thought about how emergency physicians practiced long before anyone else," remarked Dr. Boniface, who bought his first SonoSite system, the 180, in 2001. "The advent of hand-carried ultrasound has benefited the care of emergency department patients in almost all aspects - resuscitation of the critically ill, rapid stabilization of the trauma patient, and increasing the accuracy and safety of procedures including vascular access. We are finding more and more uses for the technology. It changes the management of our patients and saves lives everyday."

Dr. Boniface, who is also Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Associate Residency Director at the medical center, noted, "It is a testament to the impact of the technology that emergency physicians coming out of residency today feel uncomfortable practicing where ultrasound is not readily available. The use of hand-carried ultrasound is spreading across departments at this hospital. Anesthesia bought their first system last year. Critical Care bought a system last month."

"With the leaps in imaging technology that SonoSite has made," Dr. Boniface said, "there is no longer a trade-off between the convenience of portability and image quality. The image quality of the M-Turbo is incredible. It's making great images attainable for anyone with a little bit of training."

George Washington University Hospital is the Level One Trauma Center closest to the White House, serves 62,000 emergency patients a year and is the home of one of the oldest emergency medicine residencies in the nation.

SonoSite shipped the first hand-carried ultrasound system, the SonoSite 180[TM], in 1999. Today the company has an installed base of over 40,000 systems worldwide, has introduced four generations of hand-carried technology, all weighing approximately 8 pounds or less, and is bringing the benefits of ultrasound visualization to a broad range of medical specialists, including emergency physicians, intensivists, anesthesiologists, medics, sports medicine physicians and others. SonoSite's rugged, easy-to-use systems boot up in seconds and are enabling clinicians to deliver better, faster, safer and less expensive care to their patients.

About SonoSite

SonoSite, Inc. (www.sonosite.com), is the innovator and world leader in hand-carried ultrasound for the point-of-care. Established as a public company on April 6, 1998, and headquartered near Seattle, the company is represented today by ten subsidiaries and a global distribution network in over 100 countries. SonoSite's small, lightweight systems are expanding the use of ultrasound across the clinical spectrum by cost-effectively bringing high-performance ultrasound to the point of patient care. The company employs over 600 people worldwide and has a global installed base of more than 40,000 systems.