Aegate News

Omniplanar, Inc. and Aegate Ltd. reach licensing agreement

20th September 2005

Blackwood, New Jersey - Metrologic Instruments, Inc. (NASDAQ-NMS:MTLG), announced today that its wholly-owned subsidiary Omniplanar, Inc. ("Omniplanar"), an imaging software company based in NJ, has licensed its SwiftDecoder™ image processing software to Aegate, Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of PA Consulting Group. Omniplanar's bar code recognition technology will be used in Aegate's 'Authentication at the point of dispensing™ system.

In early 2005, Aegate™ successfully tested its 'Authentication at the point of dispensing' system which is designed to combat illegal medicines and protect patients from receiving substandard products. Aegate's solution combines a rapid alert patient safety system with improved brand protection for pharmaceutical manufacturers. Authentication at the point of dispensing enables pharmacists, who use a scanner that can read uniquely identified bar codes or RFID tags during the dispensing process, to check in real time with manufacturers through a secure database centrally managed by Aegate, and determine if the product is genuine, recalled, expired, stolen, counterfeit or illegally imported. Aegate will begin deploying the system in pharmacies throughout the United Kingdom in 2006.

Garrett K. Russell, General Manager of Omniplanar said, "We are pleased that Aegate has chosen Omniplanar to be an integral part of this groundbreaking drug authentication system. SwiftDecoder is well-suited for this application because of the software's ability to quickly and accurately recognize a wide variety of bar codes in a short period of time."

Ian Rhodes, Chief Executive Officer of Aegate Ltd. said, "Aegate's solution is a significant step forward in eliminating the risk to pharmacists and manufacturers of unknowingly providing fraudulent, illegal, or substandard medicines to patients. Omniplanar's SwiftDecoder is an important component in our multi-technology reader that will enable manufacturers to choose from a variety of cost effective technologies to uniquely identify their medicines."