Antelope Valley Hospital Converts to Masimo rainbow SET for State-of-the-Art Noninvasive Patient Monitoring Capabilities

IRVINE, Calif., Nov. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Antelope Valley Hospital and Masimo (NASDAQ: MASI) today jointly announce the hospital's conversion to Masimo rainbow® SET Pulse CO-Oximetry™ technology—enabling advanced noninvasive patient monitoring capabilities that offer immediate, pain-free clinical data and physiological information. The hospital-wide conversion equips Antelope Valley's only full-service hospital with the most technologically and clinically-advanced oximetry and noninvasive patient monitoring solutions available—making patient monitoring both pain-less and cost-effective.

"Converting to Masimo rainbow® SET enables Antelope Valley Hospital to provide a higher level of monitoring care that is pain-free and less invasive than traditional capabilities," stated Edward Mirzabegian, CEO of Antelope Valley Hospital. "This new technology allows us to continuously track key blood, fluid, and respiration parameters without using invasive techniques to collect blood. It's like an invisible lifeline that provides our clinicians with immediate, real-time access to advanced clinical intelligence and continuous physiological measurements that were not available 10 years ago. And, because this technology is completely noninvasive, the cost-of-care is reduced to both the hospital and patient—enabling us to deliver an exceptional level of care and safety to our patients cost-effectively."

Masimo rainbow® SET Pulse CO-Oximetry is a breakthrough technology platform that allows hospitals to noninvasively measure and continuously monitor blood constituents and physiological parameters that previously required invasive procedures—including: total hemoglobin (SpHb®), oxygen content (SpOC™), carboxyhemoglobin (SpCO®), methemoglobin (SpMet®), Pleth Variability Index (PVI®), and acoustic respiration rate (RRa™), in addition to the 'gold-standard' Measure-Through Motion and Low Perfusion performance of Masimo SET® oxyhemoglobin (SpO2), perfusion index (PI), and pulse rate (PR). The oximetry standard-of-care at leading hospitals worldwide, Masimo rainbow® SET provides immediate real-time results that enable clinicians to more rapidly assess patients and detect and treat adverse, potentially life-threatening conditions earlier.

Antelope Valley Hospital treats more than a quarter of a million inpatients and almost 100,000 emergency patients each year. This conversion ensures that all multiparameter patient monitors, stand-alone oximeters, and sensors feature the advanced noninvasive patient monitoring capabilities of Masimo rainbow® SET—allowing clinicians to easily and painlessly obtain and continuously track vital blood and physiological data for patients in real-time, anywhere in the hospital.

Laura Benesch, Assistant Chief Nursing Officer at Antelope Valley Hospital, said, "We see a lot of trauma patients where early detection and identification of distress is crucial to their care and survival. This is where our conversion to Masimo rainbow SET technology is truly beneficial because it offers us a noninvasive way of continuously assessing patients for key indicators of their physiological health status, like hemoglobin. When a patient is admitted to trauma/ED, OR, or ICU they will have a noninvasive sensor placed on their finger that will monitor their oxygen saturation and hemoglobin levels in real-time, along with seven other vital measurements to help clinicians detect abnormalities that may signal declining health status or a potentially life-threatening condition. This allows us to more tightly monitor our patients' health status to identify and treat problematic conditions earlier, before they become critical or life-threatening."

About Antelope Valley Hospital

Celebrating more than 50 years of caring for the community, Antelope Valley Hospital, a facility of Antelope Valley Healthcare District, is a non-profit, 420-bed hospital that was founded in 1955. The hospital is dedicated to providing quality care and services to everyone in the Antelope Valley. AV Hospital is located at 1600 West Avenue J in Lancaster, California. For further information, please visit www.avhospital.org or call 661-949-5000.

About Masimo

Masimo (NASDAQ: MASI) develops innovative monitoring technologies that significantly improve patient care—helping solve "unsolvable" problems. In 1995, the company debuted Measure-Through Motion and Low Perfusion pulse oximetry, known as Masimo SET®, which virtually eliminated false alarms and increased pulse oximetry's ability to detect life-threatening events. More than 100 independent and objective studies demonstrate Masimo SET provides the most reliable SpO2 and pulse rate measurements even under the most challenging clinical conditions, including patient motion and low peripheral perfusion. In 2005, Masimo introduced rainbow® Pulse CO-Oximetry™, allowing noninvasive and continuous monitoring of blood constituents that previously required invasive procedures, including total hemoglobin (SpHb®), oxygen content (SpOC™), carboxyhemoglobin (SpCO®), methemoglobin (SpMet®), and Pleth Variability Index (PVI®), in addition to SpO2, pulse rate, and perfusion index (PI). In 2009, Masimo introduced rainbow Acoustic Monitoring™, the first-ever noninvasive and continuous monitoring of acoustic respiration rate (RRa™). Masimo's rainbow SET platform offers a breakthrough in patient safety by helping clinicians detect life-threatening conditions and helping guide treatment options. Founded in 1989, Masimo has the mission of "Improving Patient Outcome 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 www.masimo.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release includes forward-looking statements as defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, in connection with the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations about future events affecting us and are subject to risks and uncertainties, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond our control and could cause our actual results to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in our forward-looking statements as a result of various risk factors, including, but not limited to: risks related to our assumptions that the hospital-wide conversion ensures that all Mater Children's Hospital patients will be cared for using the most technologically and clinically-advanced noninvasive patient monitoring solutions available; risks related to our belief that Masimo rainbow SET provides real-time results for all patients to help clinicians to more rapidly assess, diagnose, and treat every patient; risks related to our belief that SpHb detects low or falling hemoglobin levels that could be the result of internal bleeding; as well as other factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of our most recent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), which may be obtained for free at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, we do not know whether our expectations will prove correct. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are expressly qualified in their entirety by the foregoing cautionary statements. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today's date. We do not undertake any obligation to update, amend or clarify these forward-looking statements or the "Risk Factors" contained in our most recent reports filed with the SEC, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under the applicable securities laws.

Masimo, SET, Signal Extraction Technology, Improving Patient Outcome and Reducing Cost of Care… by Taking Noninvasive Monitoring to New Sites and Applications, rainbow, SpHb, SpOC, SpCO, SpMet, PVI, rainbow Acoustic Monitoring, RRa, Radical-7, Rad-87, Rad-57,Rad-8, Rad-5,Pulse CO-Oximetry, Pulse CO-Oximeter, Adaptive Threshold Alarm, and SEDLine  are trademarks or registered trademarks of Masimo Corporation. The use of the trademarks Patient SafetyNet and PSN is under license from University HealthSystem Consortium.

SOURCE Masimo