Abaxis Receives 2007 Medical Design Excellence Award for Piccolo xpress
UNION CITY, Calif., April 9 -- Abaxis, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABAX) a medical and veterinary manufacturer of point-of-care blood analysis systems, announced today that the Piccolo xpress(TM) has received a 2007 Medical Design Excellence Award (MDEA). The Piccolo xpress is a compact, portable on-site chemistry analyzer that allows routine blood tests to be made in virtually any treatment setting with the precision and accuracy of larger laboratory analyzers.
The Medical Design Excellence Awards competition is organized and presented by Canon Communications based in Los Angeles, California and is the only awards program that exclusively recognizes contributions and advances in design of medical products. Entries are evaluated on the basis of their design and engineering features, including innovative use of materials, user-related functions that improve healthcare delivery and change traditional medical attitudes or practices, features that provide enhanced benefits to the patient, and the ability of the product development team to overcome design and engineering challenges so that the product meets its clinical objectives.
A comprehensive review of the entries was performed by an impartial, multidisciplinary panel of third-party jurors with expertise in biomedical engineering, human factors, industrial design, medicine and diagnostics.
"We're extremely gratified to be one of only a handful of diagnostic device manufacturers to be recognized by this award," says Audie Hickey, Project Manager for the Piccolo xpress(TM) development project. "This not only validates the many design choices we made over the course of the development project, but this award also shows that with the new xpress system the Abaxis platforms will remain distinguished by their advanced design, performance and ease-of-use for routine blood testing. Our customer feedback has been positive on the new platform, as they appreciate the added features and capabilities of the new xpress, which has become an important laboratory tool for their practice."
The 2007 Medical Design Excellence Award winners will be honored at a ceremony during the Medical Design and Manufacturing (MD&M) East Conference and Exposition, June 12-14, 2007, at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center located in New York. Gold and silver award recipients will be announced at this time. For more information about the Medical Design Excellence Awards, including additional details about the manufacturers and suppliers that created the 2007 MDEA-winning products, visit the MDEA Web site at www.MDEAwards.com.
About Abaxis, Inc.
Abaxis develops, manufactures and markets portable blood analysis systems for use in any patient-care setting to provide clinicians with rapid blood constituent measurements. The system consists of a compact, 6.9 kilogram, portable analyzer and a series of 8-cm diameter single-use plastic disks, called rotors or reagent discs that contain all the reagents necessary to perform a fixed menu of tests. The system can be operated with minimal training and perform multiple tests on whole blood, serum or plasma samples. The system provides test results in less than 14 minutes with the precision and accuracy equivalent to a clinical laboratory.
Source: Abaxis, Inc.
CONTACT: Clint Severson, Chief Executive Officer of Abaxis, Inc.,
+1-510-675-6500, Joe Dorame, Robert Blum, or Joe Diaz, all of Lytham
Partners, LLC, +1-602-889-9700, for Abaxis, Inc.
Web site: http://www.mdeawards.com/
http://www.lythampartners.com/
