Los Angeles - CompuMed, Inc. (CMPD.OB) - a medical informatics company serving the healthcare community with diagnostic software solutions - has begun shipping its CardioGram(TM) enhanced electrocardiogram (ECG) machines to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Senior Aviation Medical Examiners (Sr. AME). CompuMed is a leader in providing ECG equipment and services to more than 1,000 locations throughout the U.S and performing nearly 400,000 transtelephonic ECG interpretations annually.

Sr. AMEs are doctors providing pilot medical screening services required by the Aeromedical Certification Division of the FAA. CompuMed's CardioGram machines are compatible with the FAA's ECG Administrative Data System and are able to transmit ECG data directly to the FAA. CompuMed has added 25 Sr. AMEs to its customer base during the first step of the program. According to the FAA there are more than 1,700 Sr. AMEs in the US.

Maurizio Vecchione, CompuMed's president and CEO said, "Our FAA announcement represents the first significant expansion of the Company's ECG business outside the prison and correctional marketplace. It is the first step in our strategy to accelerate growth of our CardioGram business by targeting new markets."
CompuMed has been a leading pioneer of telemedicine, establishing one of the nation's largest telecommunications networks for processing ECGs on a real time basis. Cardiac events are frequently life threatening. Using a CompuMed ECG terminal, an ECG can be acquired from a patient, telecommunicated to CompuMed's central computers, analyzed and received back on the ECG terminal where the ECG trace and computer interpretation are printed, all within three minutes.

If desired, CompuMed can immediately provide an over-read by a cardiologist and return the results within an hour. CompuMed recently updated its equipment offering, and customers can now select from a line of low or high volume ECG terminals, including Internet enabled systems.

Vecchione said, "We see significant new growth opportunities for CompuMed in government contracting. We are looking at the military, the VA and other agencies where timely remote access to cardiology examinations is critical. In addition to pursuing more of our core business in the correctional marketplace, we also are taking a hard look at rural health, clinical research organizations and surgical centers."

Vecchione added that because of the company's significant experience in ECG interpretations, expanding the market into new directions could be done without significantly adding costs to the company's operation.

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