World-Renowned Surgeon Elected to SURG Board: ALTC Goes Virtual!

SARASOTA, Fla.--(BW HealthWire)--Dec. 7, 1998--Surgical Safety Products, Inc. (OTC BB:SURG) (SSP) Board of Directors has announced the election of William B. Saye, M.D., FACOG, FACS as the newest member of the board. In addition, Dr. Saye will act as a Medical Director for the newly created ALTC VirtualLabs(tm) featured on the OASiS Touch-Access(tm) Information System.

Dr. Saye is founder, CEO and Medical Director for ALTC (Advanced Laparoscopy Training Center) in Marietta, Georgia. He is also the Clinical Assistant Professor of OB/GYN for Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr Saye, with another pioneering surgeon, made medical history when he performed the first laparoscopic cholecystectomy (removal of the gall bladder) in the United States. In the past 9 years Dr. Saye has been instrumental in training more than 15,000 surgeons in various laparoscopic techniques. He has spearheaded the development of a new minimally invasive therapy, laparoscopic Doderlein hysterectomy.

Dr. Saye, through SURG, will bring physician training to a new leading-edge approach in digital education. The focus will be to shift traditional training methods to a new distance-based approach delivered through the SURG OASiS TouchPorts(tm), the Internet and emerging mediums.

SURG President and CEO, Frank Clark, commented on the unlimited opportunities that an association between SURG and ALTC presents to the medical community. "What we will have effectively accomplished is to make available, to surgeons world-wide, the very latest in progressive techniques to positively impact patient outcomes. This is one more milestone in our efforts to improve efficiencies in the healthcare continuum."

OASiS is a growing network of healthcare facilities all connected to a central server via TouchPorts. TouchPorts are the proprietary hardware/software units allowing healthcare workers access to important and potentially life-saving information by simply touching an easy to use screen. This revolutionary approach to bringing information to the masses ensures that every single healthcare employee has equal access to information regardless of their computer experience.

The SURG focus is to utilize emerging technologies and informatics to create efficiencies while making surgery safer for the healthcare worker and the patient. OASiS and ALTC VirtualLabs are just the start of this focus.

This release may contain forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future performance of Surgical Safety Products, Inc., that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially including, but not limited to, economic conditions, customer demand, adequacy of financing, increased competition in the relevant market, and other factors.