PortBlue Introduces CommandAware(TM) Hospital Incident Response System; System Acts as Onsite Expert to Assist Hospitals Through All Phases of Incident and Resource Management.

LOS ANGELES -- PortBlue Corporation (www.portblue.com), a leading provider of web-based expert systems, today announced the commercial launch of the CommandAware(TM) (www.commandaware.com) incident and resource management system. CommandAware offers hospitals best practice guidance in developing a comprehensive incident management plan, built on a resource management platform that can be used in all operational conditions, from everyday hospital capacity management to mass casualty events.

The CommandAware mission is threefold: to ensure that hospitals have a state of the art disaster management plan that complies with best practices and accreditation standards, to give disaster managers the information, work process tools, and resources they need to effectively respond to a full "all hazards" array of incidents, and to ensure that hospitals recover from incidents effectively, tracking vital data to capture lessons learned from both emergency drills and actual incidents so that mistakes are not repeated and process improvements are made.

"CommandAware was developed by hospitals, for hospitals to provide the tools hospitals need to effectively manage their critical resources, whether it be during times of normal operation, Emergency Department overcrowding, or disaster response," said Paul Dimitruk, CEO of PortBlue. "As government agencies, the Joint Commission, and our communities look to American hospitals to reach higher standards of disaster preparedness, the obvious need for a robust emergency management system is apparent. CommandAware provides the most customizable, dynamic response and allows best practice expertise to be incorporated into any facility, no matter what the size or resources."

Central to CommandAware is its resource management functionality, with bed, personnel, supplies, equipment, and critical infrastructure tracking components, providing value to the everyday operations of a hospital. The CommandAware resource management tool allows hospital administrators to identify and alleviate bottlenecks in patient flow, improving revenue generation and overall financial performance.

A primary objective of CommandAware is to enable healthcare organizations to better meet the standards of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). CommandAware allows hospital disaster managers to easily present JCAHO evaluators with their disaster management plan, along with their training, drilling, mitigation, and process improvement activities, as well as their post-drill and post-incident analyses. CommandAware significantly reduces the load placed on hospital personnel by the increasingly stringent JCAHO accreditation standards. CommandAware will also incorporate the new HICS IV (formerly HEICS) /NIMS standards when released.

Already implemented by innovative healthcare providers such as Intermountain Healthcare, CommandAware can be easily configured to meet the specific organizational structure of any hospital, regardless of size. "From an emergency preparedness standpoint, CommandAware has standardized what we do as an organization," said Mike Rawson, Corporate Director of Safety and Security, Intermountain Healthcare. "CommandAware provides all of our hospitals with the tools to easily develop a consistent format for their emergency management procedures, including our smaller rural hospitals where there is often no full-time emergency planner."

Hosted on PortBlue's redundant, secure servers and accessible to hospital personnel 24/7/365 from any location via a Web browser, CommandAware is designed to be highly economical to implement and operate, requiring no installation, additional IT hardware or IT support from hospital subscribers.

About PortBlue

PortBlue Corporation (www.portblue.com) develops and hosts knowledge based systems for the healthcare sector. The practical know-how of recognized experts is rapidly transformed into web-based training, work process and decision-support tools in the form of PortBlue hosted applications. PortBlue's systems mentor and guide users through key tasks and processes to optimal decisions and outcomes.