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Concord Hospital, a 'Top 100 Most-Wired Hospital,' Deploys American Power Conversion's InfraStruXure(TM) On-Demand Data Center Solution to Help Ensure 24x7 Access to Electronic Patient Data

Posted on: Thursday, 14 April 2005, 15:00 CDT

WEST KINGSTON, R.I., April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- American Power Conversion (APC), a leading global provider of high availability systems for network-critical physical infrastructure (NCPI), today announced that Concord Hospital, named one of the "most-wired" hospitals in the U.S. four years in a row, recently purchased APC's InfraStruXure(TM) solution for the hospital's new data center in Concord, N.H. InfraStruXure helps the hospital maintain uninterrupted IT system availability, a critically important element to doctors and nurses since the hospital's IT system processes, transmits and stores increasing amounts of patient data.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20031003/NEAPCLOGO )

Concord Hospital, a 205-bed facility that employs 2,604 individuals, is New Hampshire's second busiest acute care hospital. The hospital is highly regarded in the industry due to its innovative use of information technology to improve the quality of patient care, reduce medical errors, and decrease the cost of care. While the majority of the healthcare industry is still in the early stages of digitizing healthcare delivery, Concord was an early adopter of many innovative new technologies such as providing point of care clinical documentation including medication administration via wireless networks for more than ten years. They also have implemented digital imaging for PACS (Picture Archived Communication System) by McKesson to reduce the costs of legacy film-based processes and more effectively diagnose illnesses through advances in imaging technologies, and are now in the process of installing McKesson's document imaging application in order to move to a true "paperless" historic medical record. In addition, the hospital's physician practices have successfully implemented a community-wide electronic medical record (EMR) using GE Medical Systems Centricity EMR application.

As the hospital's doctors and nurses became increasingly dependent around the clock on network access for everything from accessing patient history, diagnosing illness through digital imaging, and prescribing medicine electronically, Concord's IT staff recognized the need to proactively develop a new approach to their data center that provided an even higher level of uninterrupted access to the network.

According to Gary Light, Concord Hospital's chief technology officer, "After we completed a thorough needs analysis and evaluated the available solutions in the marketplace, we selected APC's InfraStruXure solution to serve as the physical infrastructure for the hospital's most critical IT applications. It addresses our need for increased availability through its standardized, modular, hot-swappable, N+1 design, and allows us to meet future IT equipment demands due to its scalability. When faced with the choice of drastically 'over-sizing' one large legacy system to accommodate uncertain future IT growth curves, InfraStruXure enabled us to 'right-size' and increase capacity 'on-the-fly' as we continue to grow. We also lowered our total cost of ownership by 'right-sizing,' and, because it is modular, we easily can perform self-service. We are now even more confident in delivering uninterrupted IT system availability as we continue to provide digital applications that the community depends upon for health and well-being."

APC's InfraStruXure architecture integrates power, cooling, rack, management and services, allows the selection of standardized components to create a scalable solution through modular and mobile configurations. This scalability takes much of the guesswork over planning, delays and risk out of installing critical applications. InfraStruXure is the perfect solution for today's higher availability and high-growth environments that in exist in digital hospitals.

"APC is delighted to provide Concord Hospital with a network-critical physical infrastructure foundation that is held to the same rigorous standards for availability and agility as their network design," said Dwight Sperry, APC's vice president, Enterprise Systems and Business Networks. "Concord Hospital's selection of InfraStruXure represents yet another example of a hospital that is clearly taking a leadership role within the healthcare industry through their adoption of innovative information technology solutions to improve the quality of patient care, reduce medical errors and lower costs."

For more information on APC's InfraStruXure and the company's other products, please visit http://www.apc.com/ or call 800-877-4080.

About APC's InfraStruXure

APC's InfraStruXure is on-demand architecture for network-critical physical infrastructure (NCPI). The InfraStruXure design, which integrates power, cooling, rack, management and services, allows the selection of standardized components to create a solution through modular and mobile configurations. This standardization enables an easily scalable architecture designed to meet changing needs and future expansion. This award-winning, patent-pending approach provides increased availability, improved adaptability and speed of deployment as well as lower total cost of ownership for IT environments -- from wiring closets to computer rooms to data centers.

With integrated management becoming a critical component in the NCPI, APC offers comprehensive management solutions including InfraStruXure Manager. A browser accessible, user-friendly tool, InfraStruXure Manager provides monitoring of power, cooling, and environmental management at the rack or room level. APC also provides professional services that optimize the NCPI over the complete data center life cycle, including planning, installation, operation and end-of-life services.

About Concord Hospital

Concord Hospital is a regional medical center that provides comprehensive acute-care services and healthcare programs to people throughout New Hampshire. The hospital currently has more than 300 physicians in 50 specialties and subspecialties and offers leading-edge technology and equipment not available anywhere else in the state. In 2004, the charitable, not-for-profit organization provided more than $15 million in free or subsidized healthcare services to the communities it serves. For more information, visit http://www.concordhospital.org/.

About American Power Conversion

Founded in 1981, American Power Conversion is a leading provider of global, end-to-end solutions for real-time infrastructure. APC's comprehensive products and services for home and corporate environments improve the availability, manageability and performance of sensitive electronic, network, communication and industrial equipment of all sizes. Headquartered in West Kingston, Rhode Island, APC reported sales of $1.7 billion for the year ended December 31, 2004, and is a Fortune 1000, Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 Company. All trademarks are the property of their owners.

For more information contact:

Media:

Chet Lasell, APC public relations director, 800-788-2208, ext. 2693, chet.lasell@apcc.com

Investors:

Debbie Hancock, APC investor relations director, 800-788-2208, ext. 2994, debbie.hancock@apcc.com

Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20031003/NEAPCLOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk; photodesk@prnewswire.com

American Power Conversion

CONTACT: Chet Lasell, public relations director, +1-800-788-2208, ext.2693, chet.lasell@apcc.com, or Debbie Hancock, investor relations director,+1-800-788-2208, ext. 2994, debbie.hancock@apcc.com both of APC

Web site: http://www.apc.com/http://www.concordhospital.org/

Company News On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/046187.html

Source: PRNewswire

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