Bergen County Early Adopter of Mergence™ Integration Engine

Pittsburgh, PA, January 29, 2008 — Health Monitoring Systems (HMS) said today that the Bergen County (NJ) Department of Health Services is now utilizing the company’s recently launched Mergence™ healthcare data integration engine.

The Mergence open source, HL7‐compliant and bi‐directional software package serves as a data collection and routing engine, enabling users to more readily manage and integrate clinical data from multiple sources often built on disparate hardware and software systems. Mergence also acts as the
collection point for data sent by hundreds of organizations to HMS’ datacenter.

By utilizing Mergence, public health authorities can more readily accept multiple data streams from hospitals and other healthcare providers, and then transform and distribute the data as necessary. Healthcare providers, in turn, can streamline and improve their reporting requirements of infectious
diseases such as MRSA, and their nosocomial disease control programs, through Mergence.

“Many of the challenges facing healthcare systems reflect the need for better data management. Public health authorities, healthcare providers, testing labs and others require more powerful integration tools to turn data into knowledge and insight about public health and safety,” said Kevin J. Hutchison, HMS president and CEO. “Mergence fulfills that need.”

Added Somini M. John, MPH, Bergen County Department of Health Services epidemiologist, “We are delighted to be an early adopter of HMS’ new Mergence service. We have worked with HMS on other endeavors and are impressed by the company’s commitment to advance healthcare information
technology to protect and safeguard public health and safety.”

With a population of more than 900,000, Bergen County is home to the largest hospital in New Jersey.  The county’s Department of Health Service is a member of northern New Jersey’s Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI), a six‐county consortium organized to improve early detection of bioterrorism, disease and other public health and safety events.

About Health Monitoring Systems, Inc.

HMS (http://www.hmsinc.com) is a privately held company specializing in healthcare data analysis. The company processes and analyzes health‐related data in real time via a Software‐as‐a‐Service (SaaS) approach. Using this approach, HMS enables clients to increase their understanding of regional health conditions, improve quality and efficiency, and ensure regulatory compliance.

The company’s EpiCenter™ system is a first of its kind community health surveillance system for public health. HMS also offers Mergence™, an open source healthcare data integration engine. Using these products, HMS collects and analyzes data from more than 300 healthcare facilities across the country.

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