ECONOMICS

Ascential Software Corporation (NASDAQ:ASCL), the enterprise data integration leader, today announced that it has received the HIPAA Conformance Certification Organization's (HCCO) Platinum Certification for providing data integration solutions that facilitate compliance with federal healthcare regulations and help improve performance, reduce operations costs, and enhance service levels. HCCO is a nonprofit organization serving the healthcare community with practical guidelines, accreditation standards and services for complying with The United States Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). "With more than 300 healthcare clients, six of the eleven largest US-based healthcare companies, and seven of the top nine US-based pharmaceutical companies using its solutions, Ascential Software is already helping healthcare companies move closer to their goal of becoming real-time, customer-focused organizations," said Mark Lott, chairman of HCCO. "We expect the industry to benefit from Ascential Software's participation in our standards development and accreditation process." HCCO is the industry leader in bringing interoperability of HIPAA transactions to healthcare through its Common Conformance Assessment Program (CCAP). The HCCO's CCAP Platinum Program is specifically designed to provide EDI Translators, EDI Validators, Large Payers and Clearinghouses with HIPAA compliance testing and debugging in a vendor neutral environment. CCAP compliance programs represent more than 80% of all healthcare payers and participation is the best way for vendors to ensure that their software is interoperable with the majority of the healthcare industry. "We are very pleased to be working with the HCCO to establish and promote guidelines for ensuring uniform HIPAA compliance," said Mark Register, vice president and chief marketing officer at Ascential Software. "But compliance is only the beginning. Our goal is to leverage our deep experience in enterprise data integration to help healthcare organizations extend the benefits of compliance, by improving performance, cutting costs and enhancing competitive advantage through more accurate business intelligence." The Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite(TM) is a complete data integration solution that profiles, cleanses and consolidates data from multiple sources, applications and systems, and transforms it into valuable strategic information for public and private sector enterprises. The suite enables unlimited scalability through parallel processing, complete meta data management, any-to-any connectivity and real-time data integration. Ascential Real-Time Integration Services(TM) extends the reach and enables the seamless interoperability of Ascential Software's data integration solutions within an enterprise's service-oriented architecture (SOA). Ascential Software's healthcare customers include McKesson Corporation, Amerisource Bergoen, Express Scripts, The Wesley Hospital, United Health Group, CIGNA, Aetna, Wellpoint Health Networks, and Anthem, among others.