Axolotl and Catholic Healthcare West Announce System-Wide Agreement; Elysium to Provide Clinical Messaging to CHW Affiliated Physicians.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 1, 1999--Axolotl Corp. and Catholic Healthcare West (CHW), the leading not-for-profit healthcare organization in the western United States, announced today an agreement to make Axolotl's Elysium suite of products available to all CHW facilities.

The CHW provider network includes 48 hospitals, 11,000 physicians and more than 38,000 employees. The roll-out of Elysium will commence immediately in Northern California.

"We carefully examined our internal priorities, ranked our needs, and reviewed the products currently available," said David Bowen, Senior Vice President, Information Management and Chief Information Officer for CHW. "Elysium addresses many of our high priority needs today and provides a firm basis on which to deliver additional automation in the future."

The Elysium suite of clinical messaging products will link CHW affiliated physicians and deliver clinical information from CHW hospitals, labs, and other community resources to these physicians. This Elysium electronic network -- a clinic without walls -- will expedite eligibility checks, consultations, authorizations, referrals, lab ordering and prescription writing.

"Elysium will enable us to be more responsive to our affiliated physicians and will move us closer to our goals of physician integration and service improvement throughout the CHW network," stated Kevin Fickenscher, MD, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of CHW.

Axolotl's now famous successful deployment of clinical messaging in Santa Cruz County, Calif. has paved the way for Elysium to become the clinical messaging standard for U.S. healthcare. "We look forward to working with CHW to meet and exceed their needs," said Ray Scott, Axolotl's CEO. "We are confident that Elysium will deliver immediate benefits to both CHW hospitals and the affiliated physicians they serve."

Elysium is the first secure, Internet-based solution for clinical communication between independent providers and their healthcare partners. Elysium Access is a browser-based clinical information system that delivers data to ambulatory care physicians over the Internet or an intranet, and provides electronic management and manipulation of the data. Elysium Workstation, an upgrade to Elysium Access, provides a set of powerful workflow and automation capabilities for the ambulatory care setting.

About Axolotl Corp.

Axolotl Corp. provides clinical messaging solutions for independent physicians and their healthcare partners. Axolotl's Elysium product suite harnesses Internet, e-mail, and powerful automation technology to link physicians and bring improved patient care and physician efficiency to ambulatory care offices. Elysium is an open architecture standard with interfaces to existing hospital and laboratory data systems, workflow support, and other clinical automation components.

Axolotl's clinical messaging standard is already connecting thousands of physicians and providers in major ambulatory care centers nationwide. For more information, contact Steve Sedlock, Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Axolotl Corp., 800 El Camino Real West, Suite 150, Mountain View, California, 94040. Phone: [phone]; E-mail: [e-mail]. Visit the Axolotl Web site at www.axolotl.com.