HOUSTON, Jan. 8, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Crescent Communications Inc. (OTCBB:CCES), a leading value added network (VAN), signed a joint-venture agreement with Web Image Network Systems, LLC, (WINsystems) to provide BLUEGATE(TM) to cardiologists and radiologists nationwide, announces Crescent President Jeff Olexa.
BLUEGATE created and operates the first industry-specific virtual private network (ISVPN) deployed to afford a cost-effective, efficient way for hospitals, large clinics, regional laboratories and health plans to transmit confidential patient records, documents, and other information safely across the Internet to physicians and patients. BLUEGATE was conceived to give the medical community sound, secure technology that meets emerging requirements from the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
"BLUEGATE is an ideal network for WINsystems," says WINsystems Chief Executive Officer Donnie Ozenne. "BLUEGATE provides us a managed VPN solution to which we add value for the rural and urban medical communities. Our physicians are driving less, reading more scans per day and producing more revenue, all while allocating adequate time to interpret each study. BLUEGATE -- with its experienced engineers and round-the-clock support personnel -- is the vehicle that will carry our product to new heights in 2003."
Texas-based WINsystems utilizes proprietary software and methodology to allow physicians to view nuclear cardiac scans remotely from the Philips Medical Systems Pegasys(TM) Workstation. WINsystems clients, cardiologists and radiologists will use the Crescent secure health care network -- BLUEGATE -- to transmit high-resolution, real-time images in a secure, HIPAA-compliant system and network.
The technology supplies an alternative solution to the traditional DICOM methodology of pushing images to a centralized server. WINsystems clients sit anywhere in the world, select the site for which they want to read, click an icon and connect instantly to that location via BLUEGATE.
"To join forces with an organization like WINsystems allows BLUEGATE to expand its current IT offering for physicians," Olexa says. "IT solutions that allow better treatment of patients -- along with the efficiencies IT provides -- to a myriad of other industries."
HIPAA, passed by U.S. Congress, mandates that the entire U.S. health care industry process all health care information, including billing and record storage, through a secure data interchange beginning on April 14, 2003.
Based in Houston, Crescent Communications provides VANs focused on small-business and enterprise-level market segments. Using several regional and national carriers, Crescent offers wireless, digital subscriber line (DSL) and traditional communication technologies. Crescent delivers VPNs, application and Web hosting services, as well as managed firewall services from its MPLS core fiber backbone network. For more information, visit http://www.crescentb.com.
Contained within are "forward-looking statements" consistent with the meaning of Section 27a of the Securities Acts of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove correct.
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