Jason Howe steps down as CEO; Brad Weinert named president and COO; Ben Sperling named vice president of business development; and Thomas Hamelin appointed senior vice president of business process improvement

SAN DIEGO, April 29 /PRNewswire/ -- The board of directors of Awarepoint Corporation today announced a series of senior executive changes to support strategic and tactical needs following unprecedented growth in RTLS hospital deployments and new partnerships. The management changes announced today includes the following:

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Jason Howe has stepped down as chief executive officer.  Effective immediately, the board has appointed Brad Weinert as the Company's president and chief operating officer.  As president and COO, Weinert will utilize nearly 30 years' of professional management experience to focus on strategic, tactical, and immediate needs in order to support Awarepoint's sizable growth, substantial client base and aggressive partner strategy.

"With Awarepoint's position as a leader in providing enterprise real-time awareness networks to hospitals, the company is growing rapidly.  Our directive now is to assure we have fully scalable and sustainable initiatives to execute the tremendous opportunities that lie ahead," said Weinert.

Weinert brings a proven track record in managing and strengthening profitable enterprises.  His background is in a variety of high-technology market segments including wireless data networking, computer software, local and wide area networking, telecommunications, online commerce and computer hardware and peripherals.  He most recently served as president and acting CEO for Novatel Wireless, with revenues exceeding $430 million. He was also part of teams who successfully delivered long-term contracts with companies such as HP, Dell, Compaq, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, Sprint, AT&T, IBM and Intel.

"Brad's extensive background in the union of service, network and hardware partners is vital as Awarepoint continues to actively build an ecosystem of clients and partners that will enable us to offer our enterprise awareness technologies for use in a wider range of applications and service offerings," said Nico Nierenberg, Awarepoint's chairman of the board.

Ben Sperling, former director of strategic business development for McKesson Automation, has been appointed the Company's vice president of business development.   Sperling brings extensive knowledge to directly benefit Awarepoint's strategic goals.  In his role at McKesson, he identified and evaluated growth opportunities in the healthcare market. Additionally, Sperling served as director of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) programs for McKesson Provider Technologies where he offered executive-level oversight and leadership for RFID and specifically, RTLS research, development and product commercialization efforts.  

Thomas Hamelin, former associate administrator for University of California San Diego (UCSD) Medical Center, has been named senior vice president of business process improvement.  After years of innovating with Awarepoint RTLS at UCSD Medical Center, Hamelin determined he could better impact the healthcare cost containment and quality of care initiatives he is so passionate about through an industry role.  At Awarepoint, Hamelin will focus exclusively in these areas, and work to expand the degree to which Awarepoint's Real-time Awareness Solutions can benefit the entire healthcare value equation™ -- Quality of Care x Revenue/Cost – Risk.

An accomplished administrator with more than 25 years' of experience managing complex hospital-based departments, Tom was responsible for all aspects of Perioperative Services and Radiology as well as the administrator for trauma and burn programs at UCSD Medical Center.  Hamelin's background includes all facets of these programs including strategy, operations, and budgeting.  It was in this role that Hamelin led the search for an RTLS system where he selected Awarepoint more than 4 years ago.  Prior to joining UCSD, Hamelin held director positions at Boston Medical Center, UMASS Medical Center and Tenet.  Tom holds a BS in Psychology, BSN, MSN and an MBA.

Awarepoint's Real-time Awareness Solutions include Awarenet™, its networked awareness platform, real-time location system (RTLS) applications and an open application programming interface (API) for use with partner technologies. Awarepoint's fully managed service model includes complete installation, network certification and full network maintenance, plus a client success team to ensure rapid impact implementation and ongoing strategies to support your improvement goals.  With its patented and patent-pending technologies, Awarepoint continues to expand its footprint throughout the healthcare sector to customers that include major integrated delivery networks, prestigious teaching institutions, premiere independents facilities and military medical centers.  

As Awarepoint is growing, achieving and accomplishing, the Company also relocated to a newly renovated 17,000 square foot headquarters at One America Plaza in vibrant downtown San Diego.  The Company's new office is a physical representation of its transformation, designed to support Awarepoint's latest accelerated growth and to accommodate additional hiring planned for 2010.

About Awarepoint

Awarepoint's real-time location systems (RTLSs) include its real-time awareness platform, firmware, active RFID tags, sensors, and bridges. Awarepoint's technologies collect raw sensor data and transform that data into high-value positioning information that can be used to add location awareness to a variety of healthcare, manufacturing, security and other applications. Requiring no hard wiring, Awarepoint's "plug and track" ZigBee-based wireless sensor network is a fully managed service, including hardware, software, remote monitoring and maintenance. The company is headquartered in San Diego, California and serves its hospital customers across the United States through a distribution agreement with Skytron. Track us down at http://www.awarepoint.com.

SOURCE Awarepoint

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