Roche Diabetes Care and ICW Announce Technology Partnership

New Solutions to Ease Interaction Between Healthcare Professionals and Patients

MANNHEIM and WALLDORF, Germany, Sept. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Roche Diabetes Care, a global leader in diabetes care and eHealth specialist InterComponentWare (ICW) today announced a multi-year, global partnership to develop a next-generation web-based solution for efficient diabetes management. The structured evaluation and communication of blood glucose monitoring and insulin data is a pivotal part in efficient diabetes management. Until today, this poses a significant challenge for both people with diabetes and healthcare professionals. Developing a solution to ease the interaction between patients and healthcare providers will be the goal of the technology partnership Roche Diabetes Care and ICW have announced today.

Using the very successful Accu-Chek® 360 degree software and the powerful ICW eHealth Framework (eHF) as well as other solution components, Roche Diabetes Care and ICW will jointly develop a technology platform that will facilitate the secure sharing of data and communications between healthcare professionals and people with diabetes via the web and allow patients and caregivers to manage diabetes even more efficiently. Already today, the Accu-Chek 360 degree software allows for well-structured visualization and assessment of important blood glucose and insulin data and enables healthcare professionals, as well as people with diabetes, to determine appropriate therapy.

Burkhard G. Piper, President Roche Diabetes Care, notes, "We conducted a comprehensive search for a technology partner and we were pleased to select ICW. It is our goal to continuously improve the information exchange between patients and their caregivers. We aim to provide new solutions that can facilitate the exchange of health data that are key for successful therapeutic interventions. Combining our knowledge and expertise, we will be able to leverage web-based technologies and make significant advances in the areas of connectivity between patients and healthcare professionals."

"The agreement with Roche Diabetes Care represents a culmination of our development efforts to date," explains Peter Kirschbauer, CEO of ICW AG. "Roche Diabetes Care will leverage the ICW eHealth Framework and our successful deployment of the highest security standards for information exchange, as we co-develop new and advanced approaches to sharing relevant diabetes data. We are very pleased to have Roche Diabetes Care as our partner."

About InterComponentWare

InterComponentWare AG (ICW) is a leading international eHealth specialist with locations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the USA. ICW delivers an interoperable eHealth infrastructure and a range of end-user applications for healthcare professionals and their patients. ICW technology enables organizations to extend their existing information systems, connect with diverse systems, and create a secure patient health record based on aggregated data. ICW has successfully implemented its solutions across Europe and in North America.

Visit online at www.icw-global.com.

About Roche

Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is a leader in research-focused healthcare with combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche is the world's largest biotech company with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, virology, inflammation, metabolism and CNS. Roche is also the world leader in in-vitro diagnostics, tissue-based cancer diagnostics and a pioneer in diabetes management. Roche's personalised healthcare strategy aims at providing medicines and diagnostic tools that enable tangible improvements in the health, quality of life and survival of patients. In 2009, Roche had over 80,000 employees worldwide and invested almost 10 billion Swiss francs in R&D. The Group posted sales of 49.1 billion Swiss francs. Genentech, United States, is a wholly owned member of the Roche Group. Roche has a majority stake in Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan.

For more information: www.roche.com.

About Roche Diabetes Care

Roche Diabetes Care is a pioneer in the development of blood glucose monitoring systems and a global leader for diabetes management systems and services. For more than 35 years, the Accu-Chek brand has been dedicated to enable people with diabetes to live life as normal and active as possible as well as to empower healthcare professionals manage their patients' condition in an optimal way. Today, the Accu-Chek portfolio offers people with diabetes and healthcare professionals innovative products and impactful solutions for convenient, efficient and effective diabetes management spanning from blood glucose monitoring through information management to insulin delivery. The Accu-Chek brand encompasses blood glucose meters, insulin delivery systems, lancing devices, data management systems and education programs – leading to an improved medical outcome.

For more information please visit www.accu-chek.com.

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SOURCE InterComponentWare AG