Masimo Launches Enhanced Masimo Patient SafetyNet™ System to Help Hospitals Reduce Preventable Deaths on the General Floor

Irvine, California – September 15, 2009 – Masimo (NASDAQ: MASI), the inventor of Pulse CO-Oximetry™ and Measure-Through Motion and Low-Perfusion pulse oximetry, today introduced a new enhanced version of the Masimo Patient SafetyNet system designed to help hospitals avoid preventable patient deaths and injuries associated with failure to rescue—one of today’s most common medical errors.¹ New features such as an intuitive touch-screen interface and the ability to monitor up to 80 patients simultaneously on four separate floors allow hospitals to noninvasively and remotely monitor more patients, in more care areas, more efficiently, and in more clinical detail—enabling an enhanced level of patient safety when a clinician can’t be at the bedside.

The Masimo Patient SafetyNet remote monitoring and clinician notification system combines the gold standard performance of Masimo SET^® pulse oximetry with optional Oridion Microstream^® end tidal CO₂-based respiration rate monitoring at the point of care and wireless clinician notification via pager to provide an unmatched level of patient safety on general care floors. The system uses IEEE industry standards for connectivity—allowing for more efficient sharing of data across a hospital's IT platforms and the option of full integration into a hospital’s existing IT infrastructure, providing a lower overall cost of ownership and improved financial benefits.

One of the most common dangers in hospitals today is the risk of death or serious injury caused by medications designed to relieve pain and help keep patients comfortable. Growing concerns over the use of patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) in the post-operative period have caused leading patient safety organizations to institute new recommendations and guidelines to combat the “unexpected and potentially harmful opioid-induced respiratory depression that continues to occur.” According to the latest direction from the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF), these dangers exist because “in most cases, there is inadequate monitoring of oxygenation and/or ventilation.” The APSF further warns hospital clinicians that “intermittent subjective assessments of ventilation or level of consciousness are unreliable predictors of future respiratory depression, even over short time frames” and continuous monitoring of oxygenation via pulse oximetry must be “the routine and not the exception.”²

Some hospitals are finding innovative new ways to reduce costs AND save more lives!

The new Patient SafetyNet system is already having a big impact on both nurses and post-surgical patients for two hospitals involved in limited market release testing. Marilyn Nemerever, R.N., director of Acute Care at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, where the new system is being used to monitor patients in three separate post-surgical units at three different hospitals from a single central monitoring station, stated “We love it. ICU beds are in high demand these days and Patient SafetyNet allows us to more closely monitor post-surgical patients in our med-surg units, so we can use our ICU resources more appropriately. Our nurses now have the piece of mind that comes with knowing that Patient SafetyNet is helping watch over their patients if and when they cannot. And our patients are having better outcomes because we can see, as well as respond to changes earlier.”