4 February 2004 - MILWAUKEE – GE Healthcare announced today that it has received top recognition for its pharmacy information system from leading healthcare industry authority, KLAS Enterprises.

The advanced system, called Centricity® Pharmacy Information System, was recognized in the most recent report from KLAS Enterprises, a research and consulting firm specializing in monitoring and reporting the performance of healthcare information technology (IT) vendors and products. The vendor performance report, titled “Top 20: 2003 Best in KLAS,” compared the Centricity system with more than 355 products. This is the second consecutive Top 20 KLAS rating for GE’s pharmacy information system, which also received top recognition in the KLAS Top 20: 2003 Mid-year Report Card.

In the recent report, the Centricity system ranked first in the “Over 200 Bed Hospital Pharmacy” category as evaluated by information technology executives and healthcare professionals at more than 4,500 acute healthcare organizations. Centricity Pharmacy, part of GE's Centricity Enterprise Clinical Information System, allows clinicians to manage medications electronically and enable healthcare organizations to implement a variety of safety measures that have the potential to reduce medication errors.

In the KLAS report, the Centricity system outranked other healthcare IT companies in the Pharmacy Information System segment, including McKesson, Cerner, Siemens and MediWare. GE ranked number one with a substantial lead over other medication management systems in several areas, including Money's Worth, Quality of Vendor Staff, On Time Implementation, Quality of Support, Product Working As Promoted, Product Quality Rating, System Response Time, Technology is Easy to Support, Vendor Keeps Promises, Timely Updates and Fair Contract. GE ranked number one over all other medication management system companies in the “Over 200 Bed” category of “Client's Best Vendor.”

“Survey results indicate that 100% of our customers would purchase GE's advanced clinical solution again and 100% would recommend the system to a friend or peer, which demonstrates GE's unique focus on clinical adoption and functional depth,” said Sunny Sanyal, vice president of Clinical Information Systems for GE Healthcare. "Healthcare providers depend on Centricity Pharmacy for its unsurpassed clinical functionality and flexible configuration. We are pleased to see extremely strong support for our comprehensive closed-loop medication management solution that includes Centricity CPOE for electronic order entry and Centricity MedAdmin, a barcode-enabled tool that enables clinicians to electronically track and confirm the medication a patient receives right at the bedside- thereby reducing the overall potential for medication errors.”

“There are especially unique clinical medication requirements in cancer treatment and we’re proud that Centricity Pharmacy has been selected by the top cancer institutions in the U. S., including Johns Hopkins, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, and University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA),” said Sanyal.

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare is a $10 billion global leader in medical imaging, point-of-care systems, healthcare services, and information technology. Its offerings include networking and productivity tools, clinical information systems, patient monitoring systems, anesthesia and respiratory care, maternal-infant care systems, surgery and vascular imaging, conventional and digital X-ray, dental imaging, computed tomography, electron beam tomography, magnetic resonance, ultrasound and bone mineral densitometry, positron emission tomography, nuclear medicine, and a comprehensive portfolio of clinical and business services. For more than 100 years, health care providers worldwide have relied on GE Healthcare for high quality medical technology and productivity solutions. For more information, visit the GE Healthcare web site at www.gemedical.com.

The Top 20: Best in KLAS 2003 is a review of healthcare information technology product performance based on data collected over the past 13 months. For more information about KLAS Enterprise's report, visit www.healthcomputing.com. ©2003 KLAS Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved