San Diego, CA, February 1, 2010 – ImageWare Systems, Inc. (IWSY.PK) and Vista LifeSciences announced today the formation of a strategic partnership to offer clients secure biometric identification of electronic medical records.

Vista LifeSciences’ products are actively used by the United States Department of Defense. Vista LifeSciences is the exclusive provider of automated neurocognitive assessment technology to the United States Department of Defense that has been used to create more than 400,000 neurocognitive assessments.

The partnership will initially focus on integrating ImageWare’s patented biometric solution into Vista LifeSciences’ STAT Medical Jacket, the intelligent electronic medical record used to hold all of a patient’s medical history in a secure, web-based or mobile environment.  The integration of ImageWare’s biometric solution will provide added security for authorized medical professionals accessing patient records and ensure that patient medical records correspond to the correct patient.

The addition of biometrics will increase the efficiency and security of electronic medical records in a hospital, clinical and emergency environments and bring professional medical record management to medical triage environments.  This integration is aimed at improving emergency management and humanitarian medical efforts by building and maintaining accurate medical records in non-traditional settings.

Vista LifeSciences Chairman and Chief Operating Officer, Mickey Lutz , stressed the importance of the partnership to bringing new products to market; “ImageWare is a recognized pioneer and leader in biometric technology and this partnership will allow us to immediately begin implementing secure biometric identification in our STAT clinical records system.  STAT is being deployed to support clinical care and emergency management and the level of security offered by our partnership with ImageWare will deliver an unparalleled product in the marketplace.  This is a major breakthrough in the medical industry as accurate patient identification will improve the care of chronic illness worldwide.  It will enable care systems to accurately manage longitudinal healthcare records which are critical for management of conditions including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and AIDS.”

“The use of ImageWare’s patented and proven product suite will contribute significantly to the enhancement of medical data security. We are excited to be working with Vista LifeSciences which will allow us to bring our technology to the medical industry in both the public and private sectors,” said Jim Miller, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

About Vista LifeSciences Product Offerings:
ANAM4™ is the state-of-the-art automated neurocognitive assessment favored by leading medical professionals and scientists.  More than a half million neuropsychological assessments have been completed with ANAM4 TM . Core ANAM assessment technologies were researched over 20 years by United States Department of Defense scientists. ANAM was exclusively licensed for commercialization to the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma and Vista LifeSciences has an exclusive license agreement with the University. ANAM4TM is continually enhanced through the research of neuropsychologists and scientists throughout the U.S., with core research and development by the University of Oklahoma’s Center for the Study of Human Operator Performance.

ANAM4TM is actively used by the United States Department of Defense, and in clinical care in more than 50 hospitals, clinics and research institutions in North America. It is used to measure outcomes associated with injury and impairment management, as well as address treatment protocols in a wide variety of conditions including dementia, MS, and Parkinson’s disease, and settings including sports medicine, environmental exposure and space travel.

In emergency management and readiness-to-perform applications, ANAM4™ is used to assess changes in neurocognitive function due to injury, toxic or environmental exposure, and stressors including sleep deprivation.  ANAM4TM baseline and follow-up assessments enable healthcare providers to identify changes in neurocognitive status that may impact safety and work performance. 

Vista LifeSciences STAT*series TM products empower healthcare providers in remote, emergency or mobile locations to create patient records, record patient encounters, access care guidelines tailored to the environment, and create a portable patient medical record.

The STAT*series TM was created by Vista LifeSciences to include the full function of BMIST – the Battlefield Medical Information System-Tactical – created by a visionary United States Army medic faced with the challenges of providing healthcare in rugged, difficult environments.   BMIST has been named the “Army’s Best Invention”. 

STAT*series TM products operate on a variety of computing platforms and includes disease-specific applications, public health surveillance capabilities, and population-specific management applications (student health, home healthcare, etc.).  STAT*series TM is scalable and can manage individual health records, expand to manage health records for a community, or provide STAT*series healthcare records to enterprise electronic medical records system.

For more information visit www.vistalifesciences.com.  

About ImageWare Systems, Inc.
ImageWare Systems, Inc. is a leading developer of identity management solutions, providing biometric, secure credential and law enforcement technologies. Scalable for worldwide deployment, the Company's biometric product line includes a multi-biometric engine that is hardware and algorithm independent, enabling the enrollment and management of unlimited population sizes. ImageWare's identification products are used to manage and issue secure credentials including national IDs, passports, driver licenses, smart cards and access control credentials. ImageWare's digital booking products provide law enforcement with integrated mug shot, fingerprint Livescan and investigative capabilities. ImageWare is headquartered in San Diego, with offices in Portland, OR, Washington DC and Canada. For more information visit www.iwsinc.com.

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