Philips Introduces New Cardiovascular Imaging Technologies to Advance Patient Care at the European Society of Cardiology -ESC- Annual Congress.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

EMBARGOED UNTIL 00.01 hrs, Saturday, August 30, 2003

European Society of Cardiology Annual Congress

BEST, Netherlands--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 29, 2003

New Cardiovascular Care Technologies and Services Also Showcased

Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) announced today the introduction of two new cardiovascular care products that incorporate advanced imaging technology. The 3D Color Flow Imaging for the Philips SONOS 7500 echocardiography system provides clinicians with unprecedented 3D views of heart function, potentially enabling faster, more complete exams and more confident diagnoses and treatment planning. The Philips Integris Allura Flat Detector features two new technologies - Xper which allows clinicians to customize settings, helping to boost workflow efficiency and integration, and Xres(TM) which reduces noise and patient dose, ensuring excellent image quality and low radiation exposure for both patient and clinicians.

Philips also announced the European launch of its Cardiovascular Care Business Team, dedicated to providing customers with highly integrated, customized solutions for cardiovascular care by offering a collaborative approach built upon the company's best-in-class imaging, diagnostic, IT and professional services. Additionally, Philips will showcase other cardiovascular care technologies at the ESC annual congress to be held in Vienna, Austria, on August 30 - September 3 2003.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 16.6 million people die each year globally of cardiovascular disease; nearly 4 million of these deaths occur annually throughout Europe. Philips, recognizing the need to advance research and improve the care of cardiovascular disease, has formalized resources and expertise with a dedicated business team committed to advancing cardiovascular care.

"Philips has delivered best in class technologies throughout the years and works closely with customers to ensure we are meeting their needs - as evidenced by our strategy in the cardiovascular market," said Tom Egelund, CEO, Europe, Middle East, Latin America, Africa, for Philips Medical Systems. "Advanced imaging technologies have an increasingly important role to play in this market. Furthermore, combining these technologies with IT solutions and services that solve healthcare issues will have a great impact on treating and preventing cardiovascular disease."

About Philips Integris Allura Flat Detector System

The new Philips Integris Allura flat detector features Xper technology. Xper offers personalized system settings, a new intuitive Philips-consistent user interface and smart integration features to boost workflow efficiency in the cath lab. The new Flat Detector system also features Xres(TM), Philips' new award-winning, real-time imaging algorithm for superb image quality, by reducing noise and enhancing the visualization of coronary arteries. In addition, the Integris Allura offers FRESCO, an interventional tool that improves the visualization of stents.

About Philips 3D Color Flow Imaging

Philips has introduced 3D color flow capabilities as part of its latest upgrade to the SONOS 7500 echocardiography system. This enhancement to Philips' unique Live 3D Echo technology will aid physicians to diagnose the severity of valvular regurgitation, congenital malformations such as septal defects and other abnormal flow patterns in the heart.

"One of the major limitations of 2D Color Doppler assessment of blood flow is the inability to visualize the entire jet and therefore its quantification," said Stefano De Castro, M.D., La Sapienza University of Rome. "The recent addition of Color and Color Doppler on Live 3D Echo images has provided additional benefits, including the ability to see the pattern and volume of blood flowing in and over cardiac structures more clearly. The visualization of 3D Color Flow through atrial or ventricular septal defects enables a clinician to better understand the shape of the lesion and its dynamic changes during the cardiac cycle."

Also added to the SONOS 7500 system is Philips' xPlane imaging, a new imaging mode that displays two views of the heart simultaneously. Beam steering by Philips xMATRIX transducer provides unlimited two-dimensional planes simultaneously and eliminates the variability of acquiring two separate views from different heartbeats, which is required with conventional technology.

Cardiovascular Care Business Team

Philips has established a focused Cardiovascular Care Business Team to develop new technologies and solutions that meet the unique and growing needs of cardiovascular care providers. To help customers realize these benefits, Philips will:

-- Make available the resources and experts needed for true

collaboration within cardiovascular care

-- Provide a focused approach to product customization that

enhances customers' existing systems, regardless of vendor,

and supports compatibility and streamlined workflow

-- Update professionals and hospital decision-makers about new

advances in technology that have the potential to dramatically

change the way cardiovascular medicine is practiced

"Our US customers are benefiting from the efforts of our Cardiovascular Care Business Team, and we look forward to continuing to work with our European customers to help improve care and advance research in the cardiovascular care segment," said David M. Freeman, Vice President, Cardiology Marketing for Philips Medical Systems. "Our strategy - to collaborate with our customers and deliver best-in-class technologies and services - ensures that we meet the current needs of the industry, while helping shape the future of cardiovascular disease research and care."

New Philips Cardiovascular Products at ESC

This year, Philips will showcase several new cardiovascular care technologies for the European market at ESC:

-- Vequion - Philips' next-generation family of clinical IT

products, solutions and professional services. Vequion aims to

streamline procedures and improve patient care by allowing

users to seamlessly integrate and enhance current image

data-management technologies, while creating compatibility

across multiple, disparate systems. Vequion demonstrates

Philips' commitment to eliminate obstacles that hamper

workflow, increase costs and impede quality of patient care.

Vequion-competent products all have the Philips consistent

user interface and are customizable, fluid, open,

standards-based and future safe.

-- Cardiovascular CT (CVCT) - Rate Responsive(TM) CVCT system, a

next-generation CVCT system, adapts to the patient's heart

rate using Philips-proprietary algorithms. With every

heartbeat the scanner acquires data at the optimal time, when

the heart is most at rest, virtually "stopping" the motion of

the beating heart, resulting in accurate, high quality images.

At the touch of a button, clinicians can select pre-programmed

procedures, scanning protocols, reconstruction perimeters,

archiving destination and image processing functions,

automatically. Additionally, review tools make "one-click"

coronary CT angiography, automated ventricular function 

assessment, and peripheral CT angiography possible..

-- Magnetic Resonance (MR) - Intera CV for MR: The latest version

of Philips' patient-friendly Intera CV 1.5T MR system,

specifically designed for advanced cardiovascular imaging, now

features the company's ViewForum multi-modality workstation

software enabling powerful off-line viewing, quantification

and reporting tools.

Other recent enhancements include the latest release of SENSE technology, that allows a six-fold decrease in acquisition time; new Nova gradients with 66 mT/m, the strongest currently available on the market; and the Advanced Cardiac MR Package and Cardiac Performance Package for expanded applications power and free-breathing cardiac imaging. The New Intera CV also features robust coronary artery imaging capabilities; enabling faster scanning, higher contrast-to-noise ratio and enhanced vessel image sharpness. The power of the Intera family for cardiac MR imaging applications is further evidenced by the latest results from the Intera 3.0T, also showcased at ESC.

-- Medical IT- ViewForum is Philips' new viewing and processing

environment for large and complex multi-modality datasets.

ViewForum can be connected to Xcelera, Philips' integrated

image and information management solution for cardiology,

which has already been installed worldwide. ViewForum gives

access to the proven EasyVision Cardiac MR analysis packages,

including Functional Analysis and Q-Flow. With ViewForum,

users can customize their virtual working environment using

worklists, personalized display protocols and role-based

access that maintains security and presents only the

information the user requires. ViewForum is a

Vequion-competent product.

-- Cardiography - PageWriterTouch Cardiograph: A state-of-the-art

cardiograph designed for hospitals that perform a high number

of ECGs, PageWriterTouch combines several unique features that

enable rapid generation of accurate reports, resulting in both

faster exam times for ECG patients and more streamlined

analysis for their clinicians.

-- Patient Monitoring - The new Philips C3, a non-invasive

portable bedside monitor, is an easy-to-use, versatile patient

monitor with a complete set of essential parameters. The C3 is

suitable in many hospital settings, including emergency rooms,

ambulatory surgery and special procedure areas, as well as in

outpatient surgical settings and extended care facilities. The

C3 is also available with Microstream(R) CO2 technology,

appropriate for conscious sedation monitoring of both adults

and children. C3 measurement features include non-invasive

blood pressure, 3-lead ECG with pacemaker detection, and

motion-tolerant SpO2 -- displayed on a large 10.4" color

screen, with auto-set alarms that immediately indicate

critical events and quickly adapt to patients' current vital

sign situations. Microstream is a registered trademark of

Oridion Medical Inc.

-- X-ray - Pulsed Fluoroscopy on BV Pulsera: The BV Pulsera

high-end surgical mobile c-arm offers an ideal

back-up/overflow solution for cardiac imaging in stent

planning and electrophysiology. The system's new "movement

stopping" pulsed fluoroscopy technology enables optimal

fluoroscopic guidance for catheter and guide wire positioning.

In addition, the BV Pulsera cardiac images can be reviewed,

transferred and analyzed at the dedicated BV family

workstation, using validated QCA software as well as vascular

processing packages.

-- Nuclear Medicine - Philips will showcase its ENSphere 

workstation, a workflow management solution designed

specifically to improve productivity, manage critical patient

data and integrate Nuclear Medicine imaging departments within

a hospital enterprise. In addition, Philips will display

AutoQuant software, its fully automated, comprehensive cardiac

review and quantification suite of applications that allows

the physician instant access to many data files in one

application.

Philips will also introduce aspects of its new CUSTOMerCARE services portfolio, comprised of a range of customer service agreements that provide superior quality of support with the flexibility to adapt to current customer requirements.

These technologies will be displayed at the Philips booth, #4800 in hall 10 at the ESC, as will the Cardiovascular Care Business Team's two virtual patient technology demonstrations: Gerard Donovan and Rita Williams, being treated respectively for chest pain and arrhythmia. Booth visitors can examine Gerard and Rita's case scenarios and follow each patient's treatment path on one, fully integrated information system. In addition, there will be live demos at the booth of most new products, including the Integris Allura flat detector system and the Sonos 7500 echocardiography system 3D color flow capabilities as well as a cardiovascular CT presentation.

About Royal Philips Electronics:

Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 31.8 billion in 2002. It is a global leader in color television sets, lighting, electric shavers, medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, and one-chip TV products. Its 164,000 employees in more than 60 countries are active in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances, semiconductors, and medical systems. Philips is quoted on the NYSE (symbol: PHG), London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and other stock exchanges. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter

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