Cardinal Health Joins Major U.S. Employers in Effort to Make Lifelong Personal Health Records Available to Individuals Nationwide

DUBLIN, Ohio, Feb. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cardinal Health, the leading provider of products and services supporting the health-care industry, announced today that it has become the sixth member of the Dossia Founders Group, an organization funding an independent non-profit institute to develop "Dossia," a Web-based framework through which U.S. employees, dependents and retirees can maintain lifelong personal health records.

Cardinal Health is the first health-care company to join Dossia, which was first announced in Washington, D.C. in December 2006. Fellow Dossia Founders Group members include Applied Materials, BP America, Inc., Intel Corporation, Pitney Bowes, Inc. and Wal-Mart. Dublin, Ohio-based Cardinal Health ranks 19th on the Fortune 500, with more than 55,000 employees and annual sales of $81 billion.

"Cardinal Health looks forward to sharing our health-care industry expertise to support the development of this innovative health records system," said R. Kerry Clark, chairman and CEO of Cardinal Health. "We've long encouraged employees to take an active role in managing their health care and believe that empowering consumers with this resource will lead to improved health-care quality, efficiency and better patient outcomes."

The Omnimedix Institute is the non-profit organization responsible for developing Dossia, the Web-based infrastructure which will empower individuals to manage their own health-care records and maintain comprehensive, up-to-date histories for themselves and their families, in a secure and private environment.

The system seeks to improve population health by facilitating preventative health measures and improving consumer communication with health-care professionals. Ultimately, the system also aims to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the U.S. health-care system, reducing waste and duplication of effort for consumers and providers.

"Cardinal Health brings Dossia an inside view of the challenges we face in improving health care efficiency and quality," said Craig Barrett, Intel chairman and one of the Dossia founders. "We are excited to have them join us and to help enable our employees to become better health-care consumers."

At the request of each participating employee, the Dossia framework will gather health information on behalf of the individual from various sources and store it within secured databases. Health records will be secure and private, accessible only by the individual or by others to whom they have granted permission. Employees will choose whether or not to participate, and those who do opt-in will choose how much of their personal data is shared, with whom and in what form. Records will also be portable, even when employees change employers, health plans or doctors.

Dossia has received the support of key health-care industry and consumer groups including the American Association of Family Physicians (AAFP), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Council on Clinical Information Technology, The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Consumers League.

The more than 2.5 million U.S. employees, dependents and retirees of Cardinal Health and fellow members of the Dossia Founders Group will receive initial access to Dossia upon its launch, which is targeted for mid-2007. The system will soon be made available to other communities of users and personal health applications developers.

About Cardinal Health

Headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, Cardinal Health, Inc. is an $81 billion, global company serving the health-care industry with a broad portfolio of products and services. It manufactures, packages, and distributes pharmaceuticals and medical supplies, offers a range of clinical services and develops automation products that improve the management and delivery of supplies and medication for hospitals, physician offices and pharmacies. Through this diverse offering, Cardinal Health delivers integrated health-care solutions that help customers reduce their costs, improve efficiency and deliver better care to patients. Ranked No. 19 on the Fortune 500, Cardinal Health employs more than 55,000 people on six continents. More information about the company may be found at http://www.cardinalhealth.com/.

About the Dossia Founders Group

The Dossia Founders Group is a consortium of large employers united in their goal of providing employees, their dependents, retirees and others in their communities with an independent, lifelong health record. The Dossia Founders Group has funded an independent non-profit organization, Omnimedix Institute of Portland, Ore., to develop and implement the Dossia Network, an independent, secure, non-profit infrastructure for gathering and securely storing information for lifelong health records. More information about Dossia or the Dossia Founders Group may be found at http://www.dossia.org/.