Frost & Sullivan Recognizes Oridion for Its Client Value and Unparalleled Technology Leadership in the Ventilation Monitoring Market

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the ventilation monitoring and capnography markets, Frost & Sullivan proudly presents Oridion with the 2010 North America Frost & Sullivan Award for Customer Value Enhancement.  Frost & Sullivan recognizes the outstanding effort Oridion has made in providing customer value and increasing customer acceptance and adoption of capnography and ventilation monitoring technologies. By doing so, it has expanded the growing and evolving capnography market and succeeded in accelerating capnography's penetration into existing and new clinical environments where it fulfills important, previously unmet clinical needs.

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Oridion is a long-standing leader in the capnography market, with such historical contributions as self-calibrating capnograph monitors, Uni-junction™ oral-nasal sampling, and its unique Smart Capnography™ decision-support capabilities offered through its Microstream® technology. It remains the industry leader, holding approximately 54 percent of the stand-alone capnography and ventilation monitoring market in the United States in 2009. Oridion technology is also offered by nearly thirty monitoring companies in about 130 different monitor models.

Capnography is the monitoring of the concentration or partial pressure of carbon dioxide (CO2) in respiratory gases to provide a rapid and reliable method for detecting life-threatening conditions both in intubated and non-intubated patients, such as malposition of tracheal tubes, unsuspected ventilatory failure, circulatory failure and defective breathing circuits. Organizations such as the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), the American Heart Association, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American College of Critical Care Medicine and the American Patient Safety Foundation have recommended it in an increasing number of situations.

"Oridion has enhanced perceived value within the capnography market through three key elements – by promoting the improved safety and necessity of capnography monitoring, then through well-executed targeting of key environments in the healthcare system, and finally through the continuing innovation and quality of its products and services," says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Zachary Bujnoch. "These interweaving factors have allowed Oridion not only to enhance customer value within the capnography market, but also to further develop the market as a whole. Oridion has been the prime mover in establishing capnography and in particular, Microstream® as the gold standard in ventilation monitoring."

Professional societies and safety organizations that publish clinical practice standards recommend the use of capnography based on the results of various clinical research studies. Oridion has been heavily involved with supporting over 60 studies and research published in the past two and a half years that explore the value of capnography and demonstrate its clinical benefit to the hospitals and their patients. As a consequence, the advances made in this industry speak directly to Oridion's efforts and leadership.

Earlier, less user friendly, capnography technologies were unable to successfully monitor spontaneously breathing patients and thus failed to achieve broad use. Capnography was traditionally seen as used only in the operating room with intubated patients. Because of this, few current clinical practitioners and educators incorporated capnography into existing protocols and teaching programs. Oridion has shown and continues to demonstrate that the capabilities of capnography expand outside the operating room and that the continuous use of capnography monitoring improves patient safety in clinical settings such as procedural sedation, general floor pain management (PCA), intensive care and emergency response. Procedural sedation itself speaks to a wide range of environments such as the GI, interventional radiology, cath labs, and critical care departments, along with other growth areas such as ER and EMR services and general wards.

"Oridion has gone to great lengths to not only identify which of these areas contains the most economic opportunities, but also which are the best fit for capnography and the health of the patient," says Mr. Bujnoch. "The company continues to reinvest in these identified critical areas, all the while improving the customer value of its products and services."

A key new Smart Capnography™ product offering for Oridion is its Integrated Pulmonary Index™ (IPI). IPI integrates four parameters (end-tidal CO2, respiration rate, pulse rate and SpO2) into a single index value. This value holds the promise of a quicker and more complete evaluation of a patient's respiratory status with a single glance. It also has great potential to increase the value of capnography and ventilation monitoring in the eyes of the customers and end users. This is especially the case in environments where the caregivers are not specialists in anesthesia and ventilation, such as general floor nurses or procedural sedation personnel. And, by trending the new index, hospital personnel will be provided with even more actionable decision-support data.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents its Customer Value Enhancement Awards to those companies that have demonstrated excellence in implementing strategies that proactively create value for its customers – with a focus on improving the return on the investment that customers make on its services or products.

"Our mission at Oridion is to improve medicine and save lives. We do this by always being focused on bringing the best solutions to the market and delivering major improvements in value to our partners, customers and end-users. A measure of our success is that, despite the current economic constraints, more and more health care systems have embraced Oridion Microstream® capnography as their life saving solution wherever patients at risk of ventilatory depression are treated.  We are honored that our approach and results have been recognized by Frost & Sullivan with the selection of Oridion for this fine Award," commented Gerry Feldman, President of Oridion.

The 2010 Award to Oridion recognizes the Company's inordinate focus on enhancing the value that its customers receive beyond simply good customer service, and its ability to understand and recognize the ventilation monitoring market's dynamic needs and potential, and to develop innovative technology solutions and services that have brought major improvement in customer value.

About Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About Oridion

Oridion provides life saving solutions for patient monitoring with its cutting edge Microstream® CO2 monitoring and sampling technologies to make patient care safer and easier. For over 20 years, Oridion has been working to improve the standard of healthcare worldwide and will continue to offer new ways to improve patient safety and make a clinical difference in patient care. The Oridion commitment to excellence is modeled on making the ordinary, extraordinary and making capnography Smart for the patient and healthcare professional.

About Frost & Sullivan

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan