QUÉBEC CITY — A ranking as one of Canada’s top 10 healthcare-solutions companies has reinforced xwave’s position as a leading health systems integrator, rounding out the company’s continued contract wins and industry achievement. xwave, a division of Bell Aliant (TSX: BA.UN) and a Gold sponsor of e-Health 2009, is involved in five out of seven iEHR projects in Canada including the Dossier de Santé Électronique du Québec (DSQ), the largest interoperable electronic health record (iEHR) initiative in Canada. These projects will be highlighted at this year’s e-Health conference, being held May 31 to June 3 at the Québec Convention Centre.

“The size and scope of today’s transformational e-Health implementations demand a level of healthcare experience and business stability that few solution providers can offer,” said Nadeem Ahmed, Managing Director, xwave Healthcare. “With more than 300 healthcare consultants and three decades supporting this sector, we’re able to bring together the often diverse array of resources required for these projects, ensuring genuinely effective systems integration with minimal project risk.”

For Québec’s DSQ, xwave is leading the implementation of the province’s iEHR that involves an Orion Health clinical portal and an Oracle-built repository housing clinical, patient and provider information. Bell is providing the solution’s computing infrastructure. xwave is designing the architecture; implementing the solution; and providing related change-management support. The company is also collaborating with Fujitsu (DMR) who is leading the HIAL project to ensure overall program integration. When complete, the DSQ will connect almost 90,000 healthcare providers province-wide, giving them authorized access to a complete patient profile that will include everything from laboratory and x-ray results to prescription histories and immunization information.

xwave is involved in a number of other provincial e-Health initiatives, supporting them in part through strategic alliances such as the Partnership to Accelerate Technology in Healthcare (PATH). Bringing together an international e-Health team of approximately 800 systems integrators, business analysts and project managers, PATH is designed to help government organizations address the complexity and risk of large e-Health implementations.

Additional projects xwave is leading or supporting include:

• in New Brunswick — integration and maintenance of four components within the province-wide One Patient One Record (OPOR) solution (iEHR)
• in Nova Scotia — overseeing the integration of the province’s Secure Health Access Record (SHARE), iEHR. xwave is responsible for change management
• in Newfoundland:
  • provision of data services that, in support of Newfoundland’s EHR, connect all community pharmacies to the province’s Drug Information System
  • a business-level overview of the province’s Client and Referral Management System (CRMS) and a rollout of the CRMS Pay Module to all regional authorities — the CRMS supports province-wide management of community services
  • a business-requirements definition for the Medical Care Plan (MCP) replacement project — the MCP is Newfoundland’s medical claims system
  • design, development and implementation of the Care-Giver Module for the province’s Child, Youth and Family Services

Lessons from these and other projects will be highlighted in the following eHealth presentations:

• Update on DSQ project in Quebec — June 1, 10:30 am to 11:30am
• Multi-year Change Management Delivery — June 2, 11:00am to 12:30pm
• Delivering Telemental Health Services Across Multiple Regions — June 2, 11:00am to 12:30pm
• Healthy Connections: Improving the Continuity of Patient Care Data Between a Large Regional Hospital and a Multi-Site Family Health Team — June 3, 10:30 to 11:12am

In Ontario, xwave launched one of the first application service provider-based electronic medical record, xwaveEMR. Built on GE Healthcare’s Centricity® software and in use since 2005, xwaveEMR is helping hundreds of physicians across the province improve access to patient information and better address challenges in areas such as patient management and chronic disease. xwaveEMR is also part of several integration projects — including one that will connect a Toronto-area hospital with a community-based family health team. The integration, connecting the Hospital's Health Information Access Layer (HIAL) to the xwaveEMR, will be discussed June 3rd at eHealth.

xwave’s work in healthcare has been recognized with a number of recent industry awards and rankings. They include:

• A 2009 Knowledge Industry Recognition and Achievement (KIRA) award for development of a Breast Health Tracking System
• Second place on the Branham Group’s 2008 list of the Top 10 Canadian Healthcare Solution Companies
• A 2008 Project Implementation Team of the Year Award from ITAC Health for project-management support around Cancer Care Ontario’s Wait Time List Information System
• Selection by ITAC Health as Company of the Year in 2006

About xwave
xwave, a division of Bell Aliant, is an information technology provider that serves clients through two lines of business: Professional Services and Advanced Technology Solutions. Together they offer clients a broad delivery capability: xwave plans, designs, builds and delivers complete IT solutions that help meet business-process needs, deliver a measurable return on technology investments, and maintain a simpler, greener and more stable IT environment. With $315 million in revenues and almost 1,000 people, xwave is one of the largest business-solutions organizations in Canada, with locations in St. John’s, Halifax, Moncton, Saint John, Fredericton, Summerside, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, and New England. More information can be found at www.xwave.com

For further information, contact:
Karen.Ewing@xwave.com.
877-332-4605