06 May 2003 - GE Medical Systems Information Technologies' Pharmacy System specialty business, formerly BDM Information Systems, is pleased to announce an expansion in the RDBMS (relational database management systems) options available for current and prospective users of the RxTFC Pharmacy Information System, now Centricity Pharmacy.

For current RxTFC customers and for prospective pharmacy customers selecting RxTFC (now marketed under the name Centricity Pharmacy) for deployment on a departmental or pharmacy enterprise basis, the Oracle commercial version/release is scheduled for a January, 2004 release. GE will also offer its Centricity Pharmacy Enterprise product, as an option on the Oracle Version 9 RDBMS. The addition of Oracle provides greater choice and flexibility for new and present GE pharmacy customers by providing both Progress and Oracle as powerful RDBMS options.

This announcement represents GE's commitment to utilizing industry open systems and standards to our pharmacy customers by providing a choice in RDBMS according to their own organizational preferences, financial analysis, internal database expertise and technical guidelines.

The completion of this initiative in 2003 and the commercial release in Oracle as an option will mark another significant milestone in GE's ability to expand the use of the industry leading RxTFC product globally across the departmental pharmacy and clinical information systems market.

"With the addition of Oracle to our database options we further expand Centricity Pharmacy technical deployment options by supporting a variety of server, workstation, operating system, network, GUI and database technologies that result in a reliable, secure, robust and scalable technical environment for the Centricity Pharmacy application which reflects the customers unique preferences," says Dallas Howe of GE Medical Systems Information Technologies. "Oracle's scalability across the full range of uni-processor and multi-processor configurations and its track record with the most demanding internet-based and traditional mission critical applications makes it a natural and much anticipated database option in the health care and, more specifically, the pharmacy computing world."

With the continued expansion in the Centricity Pharmacy capabilities and user group it is anticipated there will be increased global adoption of the system resulting in even greater benefits to all our pharmacy users through our strong tradition of sharing of ideas on product direction and the content of regular product enhancements.

RxTFC Systems are currently live and operational at over 105 leading hospital and health care sites in North America and has successfully supported the processing of over 1 billion medication orders since inception.