Hill-Rom And Radianse Announce Partnering Agreement To Integrate Location-Sensing Technology Into NaviCare® Nurse Call

New Technology Will Extend Hill-Rom Leadership in Health Care Locating by Breaking Down Barriers to Enterprise-Wide Deployment

Batesville, IN and Andover, MA /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Hill-Rom (NYSE :HRC) and Radianse today announced a strategic partnership agreement to integrate the Radianse real-time location system (RTLS) into Hill-Rom's leading NaviCare® Nurse Call system. With this move, Hill-Rom intends to extend its leadership in health care locating beyond staff tracking to remove financial and technical obstacles for health care customers as they consider high-precision, enterprise-wide RTLS for equipment, patients and staff.

More than 800 health care customers now use Hill-Rom's integrated locating solution. The addition of Radianse RTLS as an option for future implementations follows an independent verification of Radianse location accuracy and precision reliability.

"This partnership is truly an exciting opportunity," said Mike Gallup, general manager of Hill-Rom IT Solutions. "Every hospital must have a nurse call system. Soon, health care providers will be able to enjoy the benefits of locating staff, patients, and equipment all off of one integrated nurse communications platform from Hill-Rom. This will help them know when and where equipment, patients and staff move and interact--real-time visibility that can increase caregiver effectiveness and enhance patient safety."

Single infrastructure for Nurse Call and RTLS will remove financial and technical barriers

Having Radianse locating technology integrated into the existing NaviCare® Nurse Call platform will save a health care facility from needing to invest in parallel technology. It will offer a key differentiation for the Hill-Rom® product and enable the extension of the Radianse RTLS to layer in other applications such as asset tracking, patient tracking and real time alerts. Ultimately, it will translate to increased visibility, cost savings, and efficiency improvements.

"As a result of our collaboration with Hill-Rom, enterprise-wide location will be within the means of virtually every health care organization," said Steve Schiefen, president and CEO for Radianse. "Together, we are working to remove the financial and technical obstacles to making RTLS an IT priority. The potential for applications that can use real-time location intelligence is unlimited, and we look forward to seeing the future unfold."

According to Gartner, Inc., an analyst group in the health care technology arena, location- and condition-sensing technologies are critical to managing the increased mobility inherent in the modern care delivery organization (CDO). "Combining location- and condition-sensing technologies with wireless health care asset-tracking, patient throughput logistical systems and nurse call systems will result in operational efficiencies such as improved patient flow, compliance (e.g. device maintenance), resource utilization and planning. Visibility to real-time location intelligence will become increasingly vital to running an efficient and effective CDO," wrote Gartner's Barry Runyon in Hype Cycle for Healthcare Provider Technologies and Standards, 2009.

About Hill-Rom
Hill-Rom is a leading worldwide manufacturer and provider of medical technologies and related services for the health care industry, including patient support systems, safe mobility and handling solutions, non-invasive therapeutic products for a variety of acute and chronic medical conditions, medical equipment rentals, and information technology solutions. Hill-Rom's comprehensive product and service offerings are used by health care providers across the health care continuum in hospitals, extended care facilities and home care settings to enhance the safety and quality of patient care.

Hill-Rom ...Enhancing outcomes for patients and their caregivers.

www.hill-rom.com

About Radianse
Radianse provides a real-time location system (RTLS) exclusively for healthcare to safely and accurately track patients, staff and equipment to room-level. Radianse RTLS has helped more than 75 hospitals, including leading academic universities, integrated health systems and community hospitals find new ways to improve clinical effectiveness and patient satisfaction.

www.radianse.com

DISCLOSURE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
Certain statements in this press release contain forward-looking statements, within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, regarding the Company's future plans, objectives, beliefs, expectations, representations and projections. The Company has tried, wherever possible, to identify these forward-looking statements using words such as "intend," "anticipate," "believe," "plan," "encourage," "expect," "may," "goal," "become," "pursue," "estimate," "strategy," "will," "projection," "forecast," "continue," "accelerate," "promise," "increase," "higher," "lower," "reduce," "improve," "expand," "progress," "potential" or the negative of those terms or other variations of them or by comparable terminology. The absence of such terms, however, does not mean that the statement is not forward-looking. It is important to note that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and the Company's actual results could differ materially from those set forth in any forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ from forward-looking statements include but are not limited to: the Company's dependence on its relationships with several large group purchasing organizations, whether the Company's new products are successful in the marketplace, changes in customers' Medicare reimbursements or other health care reform actions, collections of accounts receivable, compliance with FDA regulations, antitrust litigation, potential exposure to product liability or other claims, failure of the Company's announced or future strategic initiatives and restructuring and realignment activities to achieve expected growth, efficiencies or cost reductions, disruptions in the Company's business or other adverse consequences resulting from the spin-off of the funeral services business, failure to realize the anticipated benefits of the spin-off, failure of the Company to execute its acquisition and business alliance strategy through the consummation and successful integration of acquisitions or entry into joint ventures or other business alliances, increased costs or unavailability of raw materials, adverse changes in global economic conditions or disruptions of credit markets, labor disruptions, the ability to retain executive officers and other key personnel, and certain tax-related matters. For a more in depth discussion of these and other factors that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in forward-looking statements, see the discussions under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended September 30, 2008 and the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2009, both previously filed. The Company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.

SOURCE Hill-Rom