Masimo Launches Patient SafetyNet and Showcases the Rainbow SET Upgradable Noninvasive Monitoring Platform at 2007 ASA Annual Meeting

October 4, 2007

The New Masimo Patient SafetyNet and the Innovative, Upgradable Masimo Rainbow

SET Technology Platform Will Help Clinicians Meet Standards Bodies' Calls to Improve Patient Safety

IRVINE, Calif., Oct. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Masimo (Nasdaq: MASI), the inventor of Pulse CO-Oximetry and Read-Through Motion and Low Perfusion pulse oximetry, today announced it will launch Masimo Patient SafetyNet, a new remote monitoring and clinician notification system, and showcase its upgradable Masimo Rainbow SET technology platform at the 2007 American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California on October 13, 2007.

Masimo Patient SafetyNet is an easy-to-use system that combines the "gold standard" performance of Masimo SET pulse oximetry with wireless clinician notification via pager to provide a new level of safety to patients on general care floors, where nurse-to-patient ratios preclude the level of direct surveillance required and recommended to preempt sentinel events. Numerous standards bodies, including the Joint Commission (JCAHO), the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement are calling for improved patient safety standards on general care floors.

Masimo Patient SafetyNet is specifically designed to keep at-risk patients safe on general care floors by connecting them to qualified caregivers quickly, easily, and accurately. When a Patient SafetyNet-monitored patient is in respiratory distress, meaningful and actionable alarms are generated by the Masimo bedside monitor and sent wirelessly to designated clinicians for review and response. As a result, appropriate clinical intervention can be initiated quickly, preempting sentinel events -- defined by the Joint Commission as "an unexpected occurrence involving death or serious physical injury not related to the natural course of the patient's illness."

The Masimo Patient SafetyNet system instantly routes bedside-generated alarms through a server to a qualified clinician's hand-held paging device in real-time. For added safety, the system allows for automatic escalation of the alarm to additional clinicians when necessary. Each Masimo Patient SafetyNet system can support up to 40 bedside monitors and can either be integrated into a hospital's existing IT infrastructure or operate as a stand-alone wireless network.

The Accuracy of Masimo SET Pulse Oximetry Enables Monitoring on General Care Floors

At the heart of Masimo Patient SafetyNet is Masimo SET pulse oximetry, clinically proven in more than 100 independent and objective studies to provide the most trustworthy SpO2 and pulse rate measurements, even under the most difficult clinical conditions of patient motion and low peripheral perfusion. Previous attempts at developing general care floor monitoring systems were unsuccessful because the high volume of false pulse oximetry alarms generated by conventional pulse oximetry led systems to provide false alarms so often that clinicians ultimately ignored all alarms. Masimo SET reduced false alarms by over 90% and improved detection of true alarms to over 97%, delivering accurate and reliable alarms and alerts that can be trusted to reflect a patient's true oxygenation status. This accuracy and reliability enables clinicians on general care floors to maximize their efficiency and increase patient safety by responding with confidence to alarms knowing they represent real clinical events, without being burdened by false alarms.

"The clinical realities of today's general care floors have changed-most notably due to the increased risk of sentinel events resulting from aggressive post-operative pain management, an increasing number of patients at risk for Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) and increased co-morbidities at admission. These and other issues fundamentally challenge the way in which care is delivered," explained Masimo Chairman and CEO Joe E. Kiani. "The combination of these patient care challenges with the decrease in nurse-to-patient ratios has resulted in increased populations of higher acuity patients on general care floors-prompting industry standards bodies to drive a new standard of care that calls for continuous monitoring of patient oxygen levels with pulse oximetry, with clinically meaningful alarms sent to appropriate caregivers. Masimo Patient SafetyNet helps clinicians meet these emerging care standards."

Masimo Rainbow SET Platform Enables Clinicians to Upgrade to New Features and Measurements

In addition to Masimo Patient SafetyNet, the company will be showcasing the Masimo Rainbow SET Platform, an innovative, upgradeable multi-functional technology platform enabling noninvasive, continuous blood constituent and functional hemodynamic monitoring. The Masimo Rainbow SET Platform allows clinicians to choose the features and measurements needed to meet their specific clinical requirements, and then upgrade to additional functionality whenever they choose. Masimo Rainbow devices come standard with "gold standard" Masimo SET pulse oximetry, providing accurate and reliable SpO2, pulse rate and perfusion index measurements, even in the most difficult clinical conditions. In addition, clinicians can choose to upgrade to additional measurements including continuous noninvasive carbon monoxide (SpCO) and methemoglobin (SpMet) monitoring and Pleth Variability Index (PVI) simply by purchasing field-installed software upgrades whenever they need them.

When using Masimo Rainbow SET technology, clinicians can more accurately determine their patients' true oxygenation status by measuring levels of SpMet and SpCO in the blood, two potentially fatal dyshemoglobins proven to increase morbidity and mortality in a broad range of clinical settings.

By continuously, noninvasively and accurately determining levels of SpMet, clinicians can accurately determine if drugs they are administering are causing methemoglobinemia. The drugs that have been shown to contribute to methemoglobinemia include Benzocaine, Cetacaine and Prilocaine, Celecoxib, Dapsone, EMLA Creams, Flutamide, Nitrates, Nitric Oxide, Nitroglycerin, Sodium Nitroprusside, Sodium Nitrate and Sulfonamides.

In a surgical setting, continuous monitoring of SpCO can allow clinicians to detect elevated levels of carboxyhemoglobin that can be caused by everything from desiccated soda lime ("Monday Morning Phenomena") or other poisons during surgery to smokers reporting for surgery with high SpCO values. Increased SpCO compromises healing and may lead to death, and smokers with residual elevated COHb at the time of anesthesia are at cardiac ischemic risk.

Also for the first time at the ASA, Masimo will be showing its latest Rainbow measurement, Pleth Variability Index, or PVI. The ability to noninvasively measure and trend PVI, a continuous noninvasive quantified measurement of changes in the perfusion index that could be indicative of blood volume status, provides additional indicators of a patient's physiologic condition, including the patient's level of hydration. This allows for more precise, timely diagnosis and better treatment decisions that lead to improved patient outcomes.

"At Masimo, we are wholly dedicated and committed to developing products and technologies that enable clinicians to deliver the best possible care and to increase the safety of their patients," Mr. Kiani added. "Since our beginnings nearly 20 years ago, we have been focused on improving patient outcomes and reducing the cost of care by bringing noninvasive monitoring to new sites and new applications. Masimo Patient SafetyNet and the Masimo Rainbow SET platform are clear examples of this on-going commitment."

About Masimo

Masimo (Nasdaq: MASI) develops innovative monitoring technologies that significantly improve patient care-helping solve "unsolvable" problems. In 1995, the company debuted Read-Through Motion and Low Perfusion pulse oximetry, known as Masimo SET, and with it virtually eliminated false alarms and increased pulse oximetry's ability to detect life-threatening events. More than 100 independent and objective studies have confirmed that Masimo SET technology allows clinicians to accurately monitor blood oxygen saturation in critical care situations. Our Masimo SET platform has significantly addressed many of the previous technology limitations, has substantially contributed to improved patient outcomes and has been referred to by several industry sources as the gold standard in pulse oximetry. In 2005, Masimo introduced Masimo Rainbow SET Pulse CO-Oximetry, which, for the first time, noninvasively monitors the level of carbon monoxide and methemoglobin in the blood, allowing early detection and treatment of potentially life-threatening conditions. Founded in 1989, Masimo has the mission of "Improving Patient Outcomes and Reducing Cost of Care by Taking Noninvasive Monitoring to New Sites and Applications." Additional information about Masimo and its products may be found at http://www.masimo.com.

Contact:
Tom McCall
Masimo Corporation
949-297-7075

Masimo, SET, Signal Extraction Technology, Radical, Radical-7, Rad57, APOD, and Improving Outcomes and Reducing Cost of Care by Taking Noninvasive Monitoring to New Sites and Applications are registered trademarks of Masimo Corp. ARM, Acoustic Respiratory Monitoring, BiFi, Rainbow, Patient SafetyNet, SpCO, SpMet, SpHb and

SOURCE  Masimo