Cedara OrthoWorks Care Manager(TM) Named Product Innovation of the Year by Frost & Sullivan
May 26 2005 - 11:29AM
PR Newswire (US)
Cedara OrthoWorks Care Manager(TM) Named Product Innovation of the
Year by Frost & Sullivan TORONTO, May 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/
-- CEDARA SOFTWARE CORP. (TSX:CDE/NASDAQ:CDSW), a leading
independent provider of medical imaging technologies for the global
healthcare market, has been awarded Product Innovation of the Year
by Frost & Sullivan LLC for its Cedara OrthoWorks Care Manager.
Cedara OrthoWorks Care Manager is a powerful clinical data
management system that organizes clinical information, allowing
data analysis and manipulation. Useful for multi-centric studies,
orthopaedic implant tracking, insurance claim evaluations and
systematic patient clinical follow-up, Care Manager has widespread
applications throughout the healthcare industry. In reference to
the award, Frost & Sullivan Analyst Sachin Thukral said
"Orthopedic surgeons usually maintain manual records of surgeries
with separate records for care and recovery. This 'hard copy
approach' makes it time consuming for surgeons and technicians to
perform statistical analysis and visualize trends. In order to
simplify and accelerate the process, Cedara Software has provided
the healthcare community with Orthoworks Care Manager. This
revolutionary tool facilitates efficient data mining and
statistical analysis and ultimately helps provide real-time
feedback for patient treatment strategies." OrthoWorks Care Manager
was developed in association with one of Cedara's technology
partners, SurgiView, a Paris-based company known for developing
transversal tools based on software technologies dedicated to
clinical data management for different surgical & medical
specialties. OrthoWorks Care Manager employs a proprietary
technology that captures relevant clinical parameters during
diagnosis, therapy and post-therapy follow-up, which transfers the
data into a structured query language (SQL) database. It is
equipped with powerful, yet intuitive data-mining tools to perform
outcome analysis that in turn can be analyzed by statistical
packages. OrthoWorks Care Manager promotes data sharing between
various centers via a secure e-mail system, thereby allowing the
exchange of information, and/or centralization of data in case of
multi-center studies. Furthermore, OrthoWorks Care Manager, which
represents a confluence of imaging capabilities and data mining
techniques, saves surgeons valuable time and vastly accelerates
data compilation. OrthoWorks Care Manager features an exclusive
repository where a surgeon can access key orthopedic and image
data. As part of the OrthoWorks suite of applications,
image-generated data such as hard tissue measurements and volumes
can be automatically populated into Care Manager, eliminating
potential data entry errors and expediting workflow. When used in
conjunction with Cedara OrthoWorks Spine Analyzer(TM), spinal
measurements can be quickly tracked in this fashion to better
understand the benefits of a surgery, or to analyze tendency of
outcomes in a population during a study. Other applications could
include automated tracking of tumour dimensions and cartilage
thickness through Care Manager. The Cedara OrthoWorks product line
includes applications that allow: - Multi modality viewing
capabilities from one workstation - Customized scripts that mimic
orthopaedic planning methodologies - Standalone or remote Web-Based
orthopaedic surgical planning - Real-time 3D Reconstruction to
identify structures and/or remove obscuring tissue Cedara
OrthoWorks Care Manager was evaluated by Frost & Sullivan on a
variety of different criteria for the Product Innovation of the
Year Award, including product significance, competitive advantage,
innovation and acceptance in a given marketplace. Product launches
and new products in development from different companies were
compared and evaluated based on their degree of innovation and
customer satisfaction. In selecting a recipient, the analyst team
tracked new product launches, R&D spending, products in
development, as well as new product features and modifications.
Marwan Sati, Director of Medical Applications at Cedara Software
said, "It is an honour to receive Frost & Sullivan's Product
Innovation of the Year award. Care Manager is a powerful
application that was developed by surgeons for surgeons, which has
allowed us to solve many of the problems present in clinical data
management today. For implant manufacturers, Care Manager can
assist in the tracking and analyzing of implant usage, pain
thresholds, recovery rates, complications, mobility, mortality and
a host of other clinical outcome statistics. Care Manager will play
a key role in improving patient care." About Cedara Software Corp.
Cedara Software Corp. is a leading independent provider of medical
imaging technologies. Cedara's software is deployed in hospitals
and clinics worldwide and is licensed by many of the world's
leading medical device and healthcare information technology
companies. Approximately 28,000 medical imaging systems and 6,400
Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) workstations
have been licensed to date. Cedara recently acquired eMed
Technologies Corporation, widely known as a provider of innovative
PACS and teleradiology solutions that have been installed in over
2,000 hospitals and imaging centres. Cedara is unique in that it
has technologies and expertise that span all the major digital
imaging modalities including computed tomography (CT), magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI), digital X-ray, mammography, ultrasound,
echo-cardiology, angiography, nuclear medicine, positron emission
tomography (PET) and fluoroscopy. Furthermore, the Company's
medical imaging offerings are used in all aspects of clinical
workflow including the capture of a patient's digital image; the
archiving, communication and manipulation of digital images;
sophisticated clinical applications to analyze digital images; and
even the use of imaging in minimally-invasive surgery. On January
18, 2005, Cedara announced that it had signed a definitive
agreement to merge with Merge Technologies Incorporated
(NASDAQ:MRGE), d.b.a. Merge eFilm, in an all-stock transaction. The
merger is subject to court approval and is expected to close on or
about June 1, 2005. Certain statements contained in this news
release are forward-looking within the meaning of securities laws
and are based on current expectations that are subject to a number
of assumptions, uncertainties and risks, and the actual results may
differ materially from what is currently expected. In particular,
statements relating to the healthcare imaging software market and
market share, relating to the Company's expectations concerning its
licensed software products, relating to the Company's expectations
as to revenues, costs and cash flows, relating to the acquisition
of eMed and relating to the proposed merger with Merge eFilm are
forward-looking statements. The assumptions, uncertainties and
risks upon which these forward looking statements are based
include, but are not limited to: dependence on key personnel of the
Company, dependence on major customers and individual contracts,
fluctuations in quarterly financial results, competitive pressures
(including price competition), rapid technological change, exchange
rate fluctuations, risks associated with international operations,
dependence on intellectual property rights, regulatory clearances
and approvals for new products, risks relating to product defects
and product liability, adverse consequences of financial leverage,
ability to service debt, continued acceptance of the Company's
products, regulatory changes to the health care industry,
seasonality, economic and political conditions, risks relating to
the acquisition of eMed and risks relating to the proposed merger
with Merge eFilm including risks associated with obtaining
regulatory and shareholder approvals without unexpected delays or
conditions, timely implementation and execution of merger
integration plans, retention of customers and the Company's
original employees, successfully leveraging Merge eFilm's and the
Company's comprehensive product offering to the combined customer
base and sustaining continued growth at rates approximating recent
levels. Further information about these risks and uncertainties can
be found in the continuous disclosure documents filed from time to
time by Cedara with the securities regulatory authorities, which
documents are available at http://www.sedar.com/. For more
information, visit the Cedara website at http://www.cedara.com/.
All trademarks appearing in this release are the property of Cedara
Software Corp. DATASOURCE: Cedara Software Corp. CONTACT: Jacques
Cornet, VP of Marketing & Operations, Cedara Software Corp.,
(905) 672-2100 ext. 2564, ; To request a free copy of this
organization's annual report, please go to http://www.newswire.ca/
and click on reports@cnw.
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