WORLD'S FIRST MEDICAL TRIALS OF SANDISK'S WEARABLE P-TAG
eLECTRONIC INFORMATION CARD START THIS MONTH
Over 5,000 Patients Expected To Wear SanDisk P-Tags
During The Three Month Trial Involving Three Texas Hospitals
And 34 Health Maintenance Organizations
SUNNYVALE, CA, April 19, 2001 - SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK)
announced today the world's first commercial medical trials of its P-Tag
(Personal Tag) flash memory card, the industry's first wearable storage
device for the health care market. The three-month trials, slated to start
this month in the Dallas area, are expected to enroll more than 5,000
patients-each of whom will have their complete medical records on the small,
durable 8 megabyte (MB) P-Tags.
Officials at Matrevic Data Systems Inc., a Dallas-area company that
has organized the project and provided the software needed for the venture,
said they believe the trials will demonstrate how the P-Tags can save lives
and deliver medical care more quickly, efficiently and inexpensively.
Jason Carr, Matrevic CEO and president, said, "Most of the patients
are on Medicare and Medicaid. One of the purposes of this study is to have
P-Tag costs covered by both programs, something that can be accomplished if
we meet government guidelines showing that the P-Tags are necessary for
diagnosis or treatment. We are confident that we can do that with these
trials."
Ed Cuellar, director of marketing at SanDisk, said, "These SanDisk
P-Tags will give tremendous comfort and convenience to patients because they
will have their medical records with them at all times. As this technology
gets more widely used, emergency medical technicians and paramedics will be
able to quickly read the information on the P-Tags and possibly save lives
by having critical information at their fingertips."
Information on the P-Tags will include drugs being currently taken,
drug reaction histories, physical exam reports, allergies and allergic
reactions, vaccinations, previous injury history, blood type and compressed
images of X-rays, CAT scans and MRI's. Various levels of security can be
built into the cards. A 8MB P-Tag can store, for example, two hours of
recorded voice or 6,000 double-spaced pages of text.
Dr. Fred Maese, a cardiologist at the Ferris Heart Center in Dallas,
said, "We are very excited to be a part of this case study, and I can see
lots of benefits for my own specialty. The cardiology specialty is the
largest specialty in the U.S. health care system, and I am looking forward
to the day when all my patients are P-Tag carriers."
The Ferris Heart Center is participating in the trials along with
the Dallas Heart Center, Doctor's Hospital and Medical Center and an
outpatient clinic. More than 1,000 of the patient's in the trials belong to
34 different health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Carr said the HMOs
will be closely monitoring the results of the study to determine if they
should start equipping more of their patients with P-Tags.
He added that "P-Tags can play a role in reducing medical errors.
According to a 1999 study by the U.S. Institute of Medicine, up to 98,000
people in the U.S. die annually from medical errors making medical errors
the fifth leading cause of death in the country. Some 11 percent of medical
tests, over $1 billion annually, are redundant because doctors cannot find
initial test results or don't know if the tests were ordered."
Carr cited one of many possible scenarios where a patient would
benefit from having a P-Tag. A pregnant woman is traveling on business and
isn't feeling well. She goes to an urgent care clinic where her blood
pressure is measured at 130/85 and a urine dipstick shows 1+ protein, a
little above normal, but the physician isn't overly concerned and she is
released. The doctor in not aware that her blood pressure is normally as low
as 90/70, she has gestational diabetes and she in danger of pre-eclampia, a
condition that can be fatal to the woman and child if it is not promptly
treated.
"If the woman had a P-Tag with her medical information," explained
Carr, "she would have been treated immediately. Patients don't always tell
physicians everything about their medical condition during office visits."
The P-Tags weigh two grams and are the size of a postage stamp. Most
patients will either wear them around their neck or keep them on a key
chain. The 50 or so doctors participating in the study will be able to read
the data on their desktop computers because each physician will have a P-Tag
reader connected to their computer. The solid-state (no moving parts) P-Tags
require no battery to retain data, and the P-Tags are expected to have a
lifetime of more than 100 years.
Patient information also will be stored on the desktop computers to ensure
that medical information will be retained if a P-Tag is lost. The devices
have a shock rating of 2,000 G's, equivalent to a nine-foot drop to a
concrete floor. 8MB P-Tags are priced at approximately $100 to the
physicians or hospitals, and this includes the cost of the reader/writer
units, software and services for online storage.
SanDisk Corporation, the world's largest supplier of flash data
storage products, designs, manufactures and markets industry-standard,
solid-state data, digital imaging and audio storage products using its
patented, high density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is
based in Sunnyvale, CA.
Matrevic Data Systems, Inc., a leading IT services, software
development and integration firm, focuses on healthcare, retail and
manufacturing industries and is known for providing unique solutions and
services nationwide. MSDI is based in Lancaster, TX. |
