Boston, MA, April 27, 2006 /PRNewswire/ - AMICAS, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMCS), a leader in radiology and medical image and information management solutions, today announced that it has acquired the exclusive licensing and worldwide distribution rights to RadStream. RadStream is a next generation software product designed to accelerate radiology workflow, significantly improve radiologist soft copy reading productivity and both improve and fully document communication of positive results of radiology studies. The software was designed and developed by the Radiology Informatics Research Core at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in collaboration with researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Business.

Cincinnati Children’s, an early adopter of PACS, has been filmless for over five years with integrated RIS/PACS across 18 facilities where clinical services are offered. Additionally, they are fully deployed with integrated voice recognition (VR) software and complete self edit workflow for radiologists. Peter McClennen, president of AMICAS, Inc. said, “Cincinnati Children’s has been a vanguard in demonstrating excellence in filmless radiology. They are an incredible group of thought leaders who continually look to find the next big step in productivity for radiology.”

“We built RadStream to improve our existing filmless radiology system,” said Mark Halsted, M.D., associate professor of radiology and chief of the Radiology Informatics Research Core at Cincinnati Children’s. “The PACS, RIS & VR systems provided a good foundation to our operation but we saw a way to significantly improve the overall imaging workflow and communication to referring physicians. The fundamental improvements we made to our workflow could be used to improve the delivery of radiology as a complement to any PACS system.”

“The system, which took Cincinnati Children's staff about three years to design and develop, has improved radiology report turnaround by 40%, with the department's average for outpatient results down to 36 minutes,” noted Dr. Halsted. “Radiologists staffing outpatient imaging centers have increased their productivity by 25%.”

RadStream’s modular design improves workflow efficiency and serves as a radiology result communication and documentation tool. Workflow efficiencies are also gained through a sophisticated multi-factorial prioritization algorithm developed in collaboration with the University of Cincinnati’s School of Business. According to Dr. Halsted, “Optimal patient care is not first-come-first-served. In particular, in busy departments or for decentralized radiology, practices optimizing workflow is mission critical because it affects the quality of patient care. RadStream’s sophisticated patent pending acuity algorithms, business/contract rules and operational metrics allow for dynamic real-time patient prioritization and workload balancing within and across radiology practices.”

The essence of RadStream is to decrease radiologist interruptions and improve report turnaround time while increasing referring physician satisfaction. “It is often difficult and time-consuming for radiologists to reach ordering physicians with important results, but good communication is critical to providing high quality patient care. The system streamlines communication between radiologists and referring physicians so radiologists can concentrate on interpreting cases accurately and efficiently. RadStream brokers communication of critical results to referring physicians without breaking radiologists’ workflow” said Dr. Halsted. The need for an automatic communication and documentation system was a primary driver for creating RadStream. According to Dr. Halsted, radiologists experienced significantly fewer interruptions during the day, saving roughly 2,000 radiologist hours per year within our department.” Overall departmental productivity increased as though two additional FTE Radiologists were working.

Referring physicians benefit as well. “With Radstream, our referring physicians get consistent, final results quickly communicated to them every time they request a call report. All such communications are permanently documented which is another major benefit of the system,” Dr. Halsted added.

As part of the evaluation process of combining the RadStream and AMICAS imaging technology, AMICAS looked to its customer Medical Advisory Board (MAB) for guidance and advice on this new technology. Daniel Stricof M.D. CEO of Radiology Ltd. in Tucson Arizona, a private practice consisting of 45+ radiologists operating 10 private imaging centers and providing coverage for four hospitals, serves on the AMICAS MAB and was a contributor to the RadStream evaluation. Radiology Ltd. uses AMICAS Vision Series PACS to network its facilities in a fully filmless and paperless environment. “Compared to our prior PACS, AMICAS has provided us with tremendous gains in radiologist and workflow productivity” noted Dr. Stricof. “With the pending uncertainty in reimbursement rates for outpatient diagnostic imaging, it is imperative that vendors like AMICAS invest time and resources to identify ways to help us increase our productivity. I believe the RadStream product will definitely help solve both a clinical and management problem. The complementary addition of RadStream to our Vision Series PACS will allow us to practice more productively and hopefully, more profitably.”

RadStream is planned to be commercially available, by AMICAS, in the second half of 2006. It will be offered as a stand alone product utilizing AMICAS integration capabilities and AMICAS Insight Solutions in cooperation with Cincinnati Children’s team for deployment to any vendor’s PACS. Thereafter, it will be completely embedded into Vision Series PACS for a fully integrated RadStream/AMICAS offering.

“RadStream solves issues that were never considered by PACS technology,” said Dr. Halsted. “AMICAS is already a recognized leader in automation support for optimized workflow. With RadStream, I believe AMICAS will help the industry take productivity to a whole new level. We expect great results as AMICAS rolls out RadStream to the marketplace.”

To obtain exclusive licensing and commercial development rights AMICAS agreed to pay Cincinnati Children’s specified royalty fees with each sublicense and make a minimal upfront payment for patent costs. The agreement also provides AMICAS with a short term period of evaluation prior to commencing any licensing activity and development work.

AMICAS, Vision Series and RadStream are registered trademarks of AMICAS, Inc. All other trademark and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

About AMICAS, Inc.
AMICAS, Inc. (www.amicas.com) is a leader in radiology and medical image and information management solutions. The AMICAS Vision Series™ products provide a complete, end-to-end solution for imaging centers, ambulatory care facilities, and radiology practices. Acute care and hospital clients are provided a fully-integrated, HIS/RIS-independent PACS, featuring advanced enterprise workflow support and scalable design. Complementing the Vision Series product family is AMICAS Insight Solutions^SM, a set of client-centered professional and consulting services that assist our customers with a well-planned transition to a digital enterprise.

About Cincinnati Children’s
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center is a 475-bed institution devoted to bringing the world the joy of healthier kids. Cincinnati Children's is dedicated to transforming the way health care is delivered by providing care that is timely, efficient, effective, family-centered, equitable and safe. Cincinnati Children’s ranks third nationally among all pediatric centers in research grants from the National Institutes of Health. It is a teaching affiliate of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. The Cincinnati Children's vision is to be the leader in improving child health. Additional information can be found at www.cincinnatichildrens.org.

Safe Harbor Statement
Except for the historical information herein, the matters discussed in this release include forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this release include statements about future product availability, performance and integration. When used in this press release, the words: believes, intends, plans, anticipates, expects, estimates, and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, assumptions and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially as set forth in AMICAS' most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements in this release are qualified by these cautionary statements and are made only as of the date of this release.