SAN DIEGO, April 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Awarepoint Corporation, the leading provider of real-time location system (RTLS) solutions for hospitals, today announced it has acquired Patient Care Technology Systems (PCTS). The combined organization, which unites Awarepoint's unmatched ZigBee based technology platform with PCTS's best-in-class software platform and clinical applications, provides the industry's leading all-inclusive enterprise-wide RTLS solution. PCTS currently serves 60 hospitals, while Awarepoint is installed at 93 hospitals and manages 150,627 assets, by far the most assets under management by a single company.

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Corporate headquarters will remain in San Diego and PCTS will continue to operate its Charlotte, N.C. office. The PCTS executive team will remain intact and report to Jay Deady, Awarepoint's CEO. The majority of PCTS's staff will also be maintained and Awarepoint's board of directors will remain unchanged. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed.

"In response to market demand and the well documented successes of our shared clients, this is the ideal time to unite both companies' best-in-class offerings," explained Jay Deady, CEO of Awarepoint. "Our combined solutions, proven track record, large installed base eager for enterprise-wide upgrades, and interoperable and configurable technology platform will allow Awarepoint to capitalize on an enormous untapped RTLS market.  Industry analysts estimate RTLS market penetration in North America at only 10 to 12 percent and at just 5 percent internationally."

The "new" Awarepoint is ideally positioned to address many of the most pressing challenges hospitals are confronting during this period of transformational change in healthcare delivery. The company projects significantly accelerated domestic and international growth as existing hospital clients and prospects take advantage of Awarepoint's easy-to-use ability to track, analyze, and optimize resource allocation and improved workflow efficiencies. This real-time data translates into actionable intelligence that identifies how to improve patient care and safety as well as financial and clinical operational performance. For example:

• The average U.S. hospital owns or rents at least twice as many mobile medical devices (pumps, vents and wheelchairs, etc.) as they need.  Up to 25 percent of those mobile assets are not properly cleaned between patients, a major cause of hospital-acquired infections. Awarepoint sends an alert to the proper person before dirty equipment comes into contact with a patient or clinician and then identifies the procedural breakdown to fix and prevent a recurrence.
• Nurses typically spend about one hour per shift looking for missing equipment, additional staff or the actual surgical patient! This contributes to delays in 30 percent of all scheduled surgeries. Being able to quickly identify any tagged equipment, staff or patients anywhere within a facility means on-time procedures and nurses can focus on patient care.
• The ability to improve workflows and efficiencies in the Emergency Department, Perioperative area, and other high acuity areas allows hospitals to significantly drive dramatic revenue and patient safety outcomes.

Deady continued, "Our clients have been expanding beyond just asset tracking to temperature monitoring and patient tracking, but they are ready for more.  They want an all inclusive, enterprise-wide RTLS workflow solution that delivers departmental and enterprise workflow outcomes. We are pleased to offer this next generation interoperable solution that enables the exchange of RTLS-generated data with HIEs, EHRs, clinical decision support systems and other HIS and RFID applications and technologies to enhance patient care, safety and outcomes."

"We are very excited about this announcement which will help us leverage our investments in both our software and technology. Both companies have proven to work well together," said Alan Gresch, Director, Corporate Clinical Engineering at Aurora Health Care. "When we were making a decision on vendors there was not a single vendor solution available. We chose PCTS for its leading software and Awarepoint for its superior technology platform. We are live on both and achieving great outcomes. We eliminated an annual spend on pump rentals, totaling $150,000 and have re-deployed close to $700,000 worth of capital because we can now find assets and increased utilization by 20%. I am so glad to know that going forward we will be working with one company to meet our future needs."

Deady concludes, "I would like to thank all the people who stepped up and helped to make this merger possible in an extremely tight timeframe. Special thanks to our investors Venrock, Cardinal Partners, and JAFCO Ventures, as well as banking partner, Silicon Valley Bank and legal counsel, Cooley LLP."

About Patient Care Technology Systems

Patient Care Technology Systems, former subsidiary of Consulier Engineering, Inc. (Nasdaq: CSLR), helps health care providers to improve patient flow, increase capacity and improve patient and staff safety by visualizing the real time location and status of people and equipment throughout their facility. PCTS solutions have supported over 2 million patient visits annually and have shown a proven return on investment in high turnover, high-acuity units such as the emergency department and perioperative suites. The Amelior Enterprise Visibility and Workflow Automation Suite™ is interoperable with all leading locating technologies, including active-RFID, infrared, ultrasound, ultra-wideband, Wi-Fi and ZigBee. PCTS customers have been recognized nationally for improvements in efficiency and clinical excellence. For more information, visit http://www.pcts.com and connect to PCTS on Facebook and Twitter.

About Awarepoint Corporation

San Diego-based Awarepoint is the world's leading supplier of real-time location systems (RTLS) that hospitals use to track, monitor, and optimize the utilization and workflow of personnel, patients, and equipment. These proven solutions with 93 hospital client sites, 150,627 asset tags under management and 47,015,515 square feet of RTLS network coverage in US hospitals, enable clinicians and administrators to improve quality of care, efficiency, productivity, and processes more easily and cost effectively. For more information, visit http://www.awarepoint.com/.

SOURCE Awarepoint Corporation