Cholestech Corporation Announces Creation of New eBusiness Unit - WellCheck.com.

HAYWARD, Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--Nov. 30, 1999--

Cholestech Corporation (NASDAQ:CTEC) today announced the strategic expansion of the Company to create three focused business units designed to bring Cholestech closer to the consumer. WellCheck.com(TM), the Company's newly created eBusiness unit, will help Consumers build a personal health record for themselves and members of their family to measure and monitor their cardiovascular health in conjunction with physicians and other healthcare providers. Wellcheck.com will also provide individuals with monitoring and other feedback tools to help maintain compliance and persistence in physician-administered cholesterol-lowering programs and therapies.

"We are very excited to bring this concept of a Cholesterol management community to Consumers via the Internet", said Mr. Warren E. Pinckert II, President and Chief Executive Officer. "Cholestech's vision for WellCheck.com includes identifying many of the 96 million Americans at risk of cardiovascular disease through our WellCheck testing business and enrolling those individuals in WellCheck.com. Cholestech is uniquely positioned with the commercial availability of the only CLIA-waived system to measure Total Cholesterol, HDL Cholesterol, LDL Cholesterol, Triglycerides, and Glucose at the point-of-care."

"Our business model for Wellcheck.com will enable us to reach our members at the testing event where their cholesterol levels may be identified", added Jeffrey Aroy, Chief Operating Officer of Wellcheck.com. "We then will offer them the information, interactive tools and encouragement they need to understand this lifetime disease. We expect this online community with an implicit desire to stay informed regarding their cholesterol to be of high interest to companies marketing pharmaceuticals, nutritional supplements, consumer products, healthcare services and exercise equipment. This opens up attractive potential for sponsorships, advertising and e-commerce."

"Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Cholestech has access to critical expertise in bringing WellCheck.com to market", continued Mr. Pinckert. "The addition of Jeffrey Aroy to our management team has focused the Company's efforts on this critical component of our strategy. Cholestech is currently partnered with IBM in the design of the WellCheck.com website. Once developed, we anticipate outsourcing the IT infrastructure and hosting of our site to a world-class partner. Our relationships with the key pharmaceutical firms in the cholesterol arena can help Cholestech to shape a premier Internet tool to help Consumers identify and understand their cholesterol. WellCheck.com will also interface with the physician and provider infrastructure to help ensure that WellCheck.com becomes an essential tool in the personal health management of many Americans."

About WellCheck

One of Cholestech's three new business units, WellCheck will provide key face-to-face interaction with the consumer by bringing cholesterol testing to venues which are convenient to the general public. Earlier this year, Cholestech conducted a series of market pilot programs to explore the consumer's experience with the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System in the field. During the pilot, 7,500 people were tested at mass merchandising giant Wal-Mart, Walgreens pharmacies, and Dominics grocery stores. WellCheck was formed as the culmination of that research pilot. Starting in selected regions, and broadening its coverage through a combination of acquisition and internal growth, Cholestech plans to develop the first truly nationwide consumer testing service; bringing physicians, healthcare providers, and consumers together with the information they need to improve cardiovascular health, and other potentially life-threatening chronic conditions.

About WellCheck.com

As Cholestech developed its new strategy, it was immediately apparent how important the role of providing information to the consumer would be. During the eight years of Cholestech operations, the Company has shipped sufficient single-use, disposable cassettes to test nine and a half million people - one of the broadest means of testing outside of the clinical laboratory. Cholestech estimates that close to three and a half million people may have been tested using the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System in the last twelve months alone. Managing this information on cardiovascular health, helping individuals identify and measure their risk of cardiovascular disease utilizing the data from the long established Framingham Study, and facilitating the flow of this information through the broad channel of the Internet is the goal of the new WellCheck.com business. Together with Diagnostic Products and WellCheck, WellCheck.com will provide personal health information directly to consumers via the Internet.

About Diagnostic Products

The new Diagnostic Products business unit, Cholestech's traditional business, remains the core of Cholestech's new strategy. Beginning with the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System, Diagnostic Products will be even more focused on developing, manufacturing, and marketing products which support consumers' personal health goals. From the launch of the new liver function test on the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System planned for later this year, to improvements in the quality and efficiency of the current products we manufacture; Diagnostic Products is focused on better testing technology. Diagnostic Products will help consumers to "know their numbers" with the same performance characteristics, including: precision, linearity, method comparison, and interfering substances compared with a predicate device.

About Cholestech

Cholestech is committed to helping people successfully improve their health. Working together, the Cholestech business units of WellCheck, WellCheck.com, and Diagnostic Products, can provide simple, accessible, and reliable personal health information to health care practitioners and directly to consumers in over 35 countries around the world. By offering efficient and economic diagnostic screening for cholesterol, blood sugar, and liver function, Cholestech hopes to help more people understand whether or not they face potentially serious health risks. Therapeutic monitoring options using the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System can help patients monitor their progress as they work with their health care provider to reduce their risk of cardiovascular and other diseases. Working together with health care providers, our goal is to ultimately enable people to lead longer, healthier, and more active lives.

Safe Harbor Statement of Cholestech Corporation under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:

This release may contain forward-looking statements based on our current expectations, estimates, and projections about our industry, management's beliefs, and certain assumptions made by us. Words such as "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "plans", "believes", "may", "will", and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this release include statements regarding Cholestech's future key role in facilitating personal health management; Cholestech's development of the first nationwide consumer testing service; and Cholestech's ability to manage cholesterol and other cardiovascular health information over the internet. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefor our actual results could differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statements as a result of various factors.

Important factors that may cause our results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the risks inherent in acquisitions of technologies and businesses; integration issues; unanticipated expenditures; changing relationships with customers, suppliers, and strategic partners; potential contractual, intellectual property, or employment issues; and the risk that the acquisition can not be completed successfully or that anticipated benefits are not realized; delays; the loss of a significant customer; the availability and pricing of competing products and services and the resulting effects on sales and pricing of our products and services; our ability to hire and retain key executives, technical personnel, and other employees in the numbers, with the capabilities, and at the compensation levels needed to implement our business and product plans; the quality of our products; business disruptions, claims, expenses, and other difficulties resulting from "Year 2000" problems in computer-based systems used by us, our suppliers or our customers; general economic conditions and specific conditions in the markets we address; and other factors.

There are several major risks created by our pursuit of our new strategy. These risks include the following:

We have no experience in the Testing Services or Internet Businesses. The testing services business and the Internet business to be pursued through our newly created WellCheck and WellCheck.com businesses are completely new to Cholestech and our management team. To date our business has been exclusively in the area of manufacturing and marketing the Cholestech L.D.X(R) System. We may not be able to successfully develop these new businesses. The demands of attempting to grow these new businesses may prevent us from devoting significant time and attention to our traditional business, and that traditional business may decline.

Internet Health Management is a new and unproven Business. The internet-based health information management business is a very new and as yet unproven market. Whether we succeed in this business will depend upon individual acceptance of internet-based management of personal health information. People may not feel comfortable having their health-related information available over the Internet despite the privacy and security measures we plan to take.

We have minimal experience in managing geographically diverse operations. Our traditional business has been managed and operated almost exclusively from our Hayward, California headquarters. The new WellCheck business we are adopting will require us to operate in multiple geographic locations. This will require us to manage multiple, geographically dispersed businesses and adapt our management and financial systems and controls to this new geographically dispersed business. We may not be able to manage these changes rapidly, successfully, or at all.

Significant Startup Expenses. The development of the two new business units, and the WellCheck.com Internet business in particular, will require significant start-up expenditures. These expenditures are likely to materially effect the operating results of Cholestech as a whole. The Company may need to seek additional capital to help fund these start-up expenses. The required additional capital may not be available to us on favorable or acceptable terms when required, or at all. If we cannot obtain required additional capital, we may have to change our business strategy, which would be disruptive to our business. If we raise additional capital through borrowings, the terms of such borrowings may impose limitations on how our management may operate the business in the future. If we raise additional capital by issuing equity, this may result in a dilution of existing shareholders' interests in Cholestech. Also, equity issued by us may have rights, preferences, or privileges senior to those of our existing shareholders.

Acquisition Related Risks. The WellCheck business will be developed in significant part by our acquiring existing testing service businesses. We may acquire services and/or technology to assist in developing our WellCheck.com business as well. Any such acquisition could result in significant amounts of cash, potentially dilutive issuances of equity securities, and/or the incurring of debt or amortization expenses related to goodwill and other intangible assets, any of which could materially harm our operating results and business. Additional risks from the acquisition(s) we plan may include: -0-

--   Difficulties in assimilating the operations, technologies,
     products, services, and personnel of the acquired company or
     business - especially assimilating multiple small businesses that
     Cholestech may acquire.
--   The diversion of our management's attention from other business
     concerns; and
--   The potential loss of key employees of the acquired company or
     business.

Internet Business Risks. Our planned WellCheck.com business will involve the provision and management of individual health-related information over the Internet. Despite security measures we plan to take, such information may be accessed or manipulated by third parties without our, or the individual's consent. Any such security breach could greatly erode consumer confidence in our WellCheck.com business and could severely harm that business and its prospects. Additionally, if an individual's health information is corrupted by software or technical problems, consumer confidence in the WellCheck.com business could be severely damaged. If consumer information is altered by third parties or by technical problems, the affected individual may bring litigation against Cholestech and/or the Company's web site hosting partners. Any such litigation could result in significant expense, including any damage awards. Even if ultimately decided in our favor, such litigation could result in significant expense and distraction of our management.

Our recent Annual Report of Form 10-K and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings discuss some of the important risk factors that may effect our business, results of operations, and financial condition. Cholestech undertakes no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason. All such forward-looking statements are current only as of the date on which such statements were made.

Note to Editors: Cholestech L.D.X(R), WellCheck, and WellCheck.com are registered trademarks of Cholestech Corporation. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. For more information about Cholestech and its products visit us on the web at www.cholestech.com