WESTMINSTER, Colo.— March 30, 2006 — Global Healthcare Exchange, LLC (GHX) has introduced the new GHX AllSource Content Repository, healthcare’s only platform for product data synchronization, utilizing supplier-verified and maintained product information. The new release enables suppliers to publish significantly more information about their products and to easily update that information automatically. As a result, hospitals and other healthcare trading partners will soon be able to download syndicated product information and receive customized catalogs from suppliers. The new functionality simplifies catalog maintenance for suppliers and will provide their customers and trading partners with cost-effective access to a broader range of more accurate product data that can be used to reduce purchase order errors and improve product sourcing, contract compliance and patient safety initiatives.

Created five years ago as the foundation for product data synchronization in the healthcare industry, the AllSource repository contains information on more than 2.3 million products, representing 85 percent of the medical and surgical products regularly purchased by hospitals. All healthcare suppliers can publish data to the AllSource repository, regardless of their participation in GHX’s electronic trading exchange.

“The introduction of the new AllSource is an important milestone in our efforts to foster greater adoption and use of industry standards in the healthcare supply chain. By providing a platform for industry-wide product data synchronization, along with services to facilitate the use of trading partner and customer identifiers, GHX can help make sure the right products reach the right place at the right time and the right price,” says GHX Chief Executive Officer Mike Mahoney.

Tyco Healthcare believes use of industry standards such as Universal Product Numbers (UPNs) is critical to lowering supply chain costs. “Electronic orders are more than five times less expensive to process than manual orders, but only if those orders are error free. Storing UPNs in AllSource to uniquely identify products is one way to reduce those errors,” says Corwin Hee, Director, Internet Marketing, for Tyco. The number of suppliers publishing UPNs for their products has increased 15-fold in the past two years.

Suppliers now have a place where they can maintain their product data for all of their customers, rather than having to publish multiple catalogs, and providers will be able to access the information from multiple suppliers. Suppliers can publish more than 150 product attributes, such as: all units of measure for a product; multiple product number types including universal product numbers and which number should be used for electronic ordering; replacement product numbers for obsolete products; whether a product contains latex or hazardous materials; minimum and multiple order quantity requirements; and Web sites where customers can get additional information.

As part of industry efforts to promote development of a single source of supplier-verified product data for healthcare, a large public health system recently conducted a mini-data synchronization pilot comparing its raw purchasing data for products from Johnson & Johnson Medical Device & Diagnostics companies with data published by Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc. in the AllSource repository. The pilot enabled the healthcare system to identify, among other things, that nearly one-third of the items listed in their purchasing data were duplicate entries for the same product, and that their vendor or manufacturer catalog numbers needed to be updated for more than 350 products. By utilizing the AllSource repository and updating their purchasing data for Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc., the healthcare system was also able to identify five products containing hazardous materials, two with latex, and 140 that are latex free.

“Johnson & Johnson Medical Device & Diagnostic companies have continued to pursue data excellence, both internally and externally, because we understand how critical accurate data is to the supply chain,” says Kevin Ruffe, Worldwide Vice President, eBusiness for Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc. “The GHX AllSource repository plays a critical role in helping us enable a more efficient supply chain that delivers value to all involved.”

“Lack of data synchronization increases costs for both suppliers and providers,” says Carol Stone, Vice President, Corporate Marketing, for CR Bard. ”This new platform enables all suppliers to provide their customers with even more information about their products, making full data synchronization a reality for healthcare. More accurate data will reduce purchase order errors, invoice exceptions, and customer service inquiries that cost all of us time and money.” More than 70 percent of all purchasing errors in healthcare are related to inaccurate product information, according to the Healthcare eBusiness Collaborative, and the Health Distribution Management Association says those errors often result in invoice exceptions, which cost providers and suppliers between $15 and $50 each to reconcile.

Clinical staff will be able to use detailed product information in AllSource to find materials safety data sheets and other information on the listed supplier Web sites to learn more about the products they’re using. Knowing critical information, such as if a product contains latex or hazardous materials, is important when selecting products for patient care. Accurate product data is also a prerequisite for healthcare providers to ensure they are purchasing products on contract and at the correct price, and to create linkages between supply chain and financial data to better understand supply costs by procedure and by department.

“Hospitals rely increasingly on contracts to control rising supply costs,” says Bill Francis, Vice President, Operations, for HealthTrust Purchasing Group. “But to make sure they are being charged the right price, all parties involved, including the supplier and GPO, need to be talking about the same product. The new AllSource can make that possible by serving as a single source of truth for product data and data synchronization.”

Hospitals that have utilized the data in AllSource to cleanse their product item masters have, on average, reduced discrepancies between purchase orders and purchase order acknowledgements by 25 to 50 percent and cut the time spent by purchasing and accounts payable staff resolving order exceptions in half. Reduced invoice discrepancies enable customers to pay suppliers faster and qualify for applicable early pay discounts, while lowering days sales outstanding (DSOs) and yielding financial returns for suppliers. For example, a supplier with a turnover of $750 million that successfully decreases its DSO by one day will yield a return of $185,000 on an annualized basis, assuming a cost of debt of 9 percent.

GHX has already provided data synchronization services for more than 1500 hospitals and expects that number to grow significantly, with more than 1000 new hospitals migrating to GHX as a result of the company’s recent merger with Neoforma.

About Global Healthcare Exchange
Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX) provides an open and neutral electronic trading exchange, as well as complementary products and services, designed to improve the procurement-to-payment process in the healthcare supply chain. Service offerings include:

• Exchange services that support trading partner connectivity and provide electronic transaction sets, order validation and reporting tools
• Content services utilizing the GHX AllSource® product content repository as the foundation for data synchronization and advanced content services
• Contract services that allow users to maximize contract utilization
• Procurement services that enable automation of the requisitioning process
• Business Intelligence reports designed to provide strategic decision-making data