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Saint Joseph Mercy Health System Rolls Out PharmASSIST Automated Dispensing Systems to Four Pharmacies

JOHNSON CITY, NY - October 17, 2005 - Innovation Associates announced today that Saint Joseph Mercy Health System, with hospitals in Ann Arbor, Saline and Livingston County, Michigan, has selected their PharmASSIST® Symphony® automated prescription dispensing and workflow management systems for installation in four pharmacies processing over 15,000 prescriptions monthly. Saint Joseph Mercy Health System goals for implementing pharmacy automation were to be on the cutting edge of technology, to streamline their pharmacy workflow, and to increase the ratio of their pharmacy technicians to pharmacists.

“We selected the PharmASSIST technology based on a number of factors. The system’s small physical footprint was a huge selling point, and the flexibility of the counting technology – especially the ease of assigning and reassigning dispensers to different drugs using simply barcode scanning for the drug changeovers,” says Laura Passiak, a project coordinator for the PharmASSIST implementations at Saint Joseph Mercy. “Most importantly, Innovation’s entire staff from sales to implementation staff to the end-user trainer were the utmost professionals, attentive to our needs, and extremely flexible.”

The Saint Joseph Mercy Health System pharmacies will have various PharmASSIST configurations with systems ranging from stand-alone Symphony software applications to systems with one PharmASSIST cabinet (counting technology with 50 dispensers) and multiple workstations for their various workflow tasks. The PharmASSIST system is fully integrated with their pharmacy management system, Pharmacy Rx by NDC Health, ensuring real-time prescription order flow for all Rx fulfillment tasks.

Saint Joseph Mercy Health System is comprised of St. Joseph Mercy Hospital Ann Arbor, Saint Joseph Mercy Livingston Hospital in Livingston County and Saint Joseph Mercy Saline Hospital in Saline and 14 outpatient facilities. Areas of expertise include clinical research, emergency medicine, cardiovascular, oncology, orthopedics and neurosciences, and obstetrics. Saint Joseph Mercy Health System is a member organization of Trinity Health, the fourth largest catholic health care system in the country. www.sjmercyhealth.org.

Innovation Associates, Inc., a leader in the world of automated prescription dispensing, offers the PharmASSIST family of products to address the prescription growth, quality assurance, pharmacy workflow, and cost control challenges of all size pharmacies. With over three decades of broad-based, business experience, Innovation Associates is dedicated to delivering the highest-quality pharmacy automation products to the pharmacy industry. For more information on Innovation Associates, Inc., visit www.innovat.com.

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