Oceania Announces Alliance With Axolotl; Oceania Teams With Axolotl to Reach More Physicians.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--Feb. 22, 1999--Oceania(R), a leader in clinical information technology, and Axolotl, a Mountain View, Calif.-based developer of clinical messaging systems, announced a cooperative alliance today.

The alliance enhances the benefits of both companies' information tools for physicians to use in their delivery of health care. Under the terms of the agreement, Oceania will market Axolotl's Elysium suite of clinical messaging products to its customers, Axolotl will market the Oceania WAVE(R) Electronic Health Record and Oceania Notes products to Axolotl's customers, and the companies will collaborate on technology and product enhancements.

Oceania innovative WAVE(R) Electronic Health Record technology enables physicians and other clinicians to electronically capture, access, and analyze clinical information at the point of care. The company's Oceania Notes clinical documentation component, an essential part of WAVE, is also available to be embedded in other clinical information systems.

These products are designed to ease the burden of managing the vast amounts of patient health information that is traditionally handwritten or transcribed, and facilitate more effective, consistent patient outcomes.

Axolotl's Elysium products improve patient care and increase efficiency in ambulatory care offices. Using Internet technologies, "smart" e-mail, and workflow automation, Elysium links physicians to each other and to the clinical information from their hospitals, labs, clinics and other community-wide resources.

This electronic network -- a clinic without walls -- greatly speeds up consultations, authorizations, referrals, lab ordering and prescription writing to satisfy the goals of physician integration and service improvement for health care institutions.

Richard E. Ward, MD, MBA Oceania vice president and general manager for organization products, stated, "We are excited about the opportunity to combine Oceania expertise in clinical documentation and analysis with Axolotl's experience with clinical messaging and workflow. Our integrated products will offer physicians a powerful set of new tools to support their clinical practice, while helping them meet the challenges of the current health care environment."

"Oceania selection of Elysium for its clinical messaging offering endorses Axolotl's lead position in the e-healthcare market," stated Ray Scott, Axolotl's CEO. "Our customers will benefit from Oceania patented methodology for capturing clear data from the clinician-patient encounter, at the point of care. We're pleased to have the opportunity to work with the recognized leader for automated clinical documentation."

Axolotl implemented the first operational clinical network in the United States composed of unrelated health care providers. The network has been operating in Santa Cruz County, California for two years. Working like the circulatory system of the health care community, the Elysium network moves information to wherever it's needed, when it's needed.

It electronically links health care professionals using communication channels that are already in place -- the Internet, private intranets, or a combination of both.

Oceania clinical information products are currently being deployed in some of the nation's largest health care organizations, including Kaiser Permanente and the United States Department of Defense. The privately held company operates facilities in Redwood City, Oakland, Calif. and Falls Church, Va.

More information about Oceania is available at www.oceania.com.

Note to Editors: Oceania, WAVE, and the Oceania logo are registered trademarks of Oceania, Inc.