Munich, December 11, 2002. Dianoema, the Italian leader in Web applications for the healthcare market, with over 200 installations in major Italian healthcare institutions, has acquired the German company GMD (Gesellschaft für Medizinische Datenverarbeitung mbH). This strategic move is aimed at integrating Dianoema's offer with innovative solutions for Internet-based handling of clinical processes.

GMD develops and markets e-health Solutions, a software platform for clinical workflow and Virtual Electronic Patient Record. E-health Solutions offers components for the integration of medical and administrative IT systems in the hospital and workflow oriented support for the clinical workspace. It also enables integrated healthcare networks between hospitals, General Practitoners and other homecare providers. GMD is one of the first healthcare IT players to provide an easy to use connectivity platform that interfaces with existing and future medical and administrative systems.

With the acquisition of GMD, Dianoema reinforces its commitment in the e-health solutions product family. This step is a natural outcome of a very successful relationship that was initiated with collaboration with GMD in June 2001.
Mr. Corbani, new CEO of GMD, said: “My main focus is the consolidation of GMD as an outstanding company that is providing an excellent web-based platform for advanced web-services. The GMD core competence is to implement this platform in high-quality and stability.”

Dianoema has chosen e-health.solutions as its development platform since more than a year with great success in Italy. “We will bring GMD to an extended partner strategy. We think that many companies in Europe can use e-health.solutions as their platform to implement quickly advanced web-services for the new requirements in the healthcare sector.” Mr. Francesco Serra, the CEO of Dianoema, mentioned.

In January 1999, Earlybird invested as Lead Investor in the early stage company GMD, followed by Wellington and Health.com in March 2000 in a second round financing and Lion Bioscience in February 2001 in third round financing.
“Our strategy to identify and attract the best sources of later stage capital requirements and support GMD in the set up of partnering and strategic alliances like the one with Dianoema, is an example of our value add strategy as early stage investor”, says Dr. Hendrik Brandis, Partner at Earlybird and adds “We are very pleased that GMD has been able to establish itself so well, thus making it an attractive partner for a company like Dianoema.


About Dianoema

Dianoema is an Italian company set up in 1996, which implements IT projects in public and private healthcare institutions. Dianoema has acquired a great competence in the diagnostic field as LIS/RIS/AP Systems.
Dianoema group includes also: Noematica, headquartered in Bologna, Italnoema and Noema Consulting headquartered in Rome. The group relays on an overall staff of 90 employees (almost all with a MS in engineering).
Total group revenues for year 2002 are expected to be 10 million €.
Dianoema is UNI EN ISO 9001-certified for organisation, software development and technical support in the healthcare sector. The corporate balance sheet is certified by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Dianoema develops and markets, among other applications, Italab C/S the most widespread LIS in Italy and DNWeb, which has already won the market’s preference.
Dianoema’s corporate mission is “to help healthcare organisations improve service efficiency and quality, with an innovative use of Information Technology”. Additional information about Dianoema can be found at www.dianoema.it.


About Earlybird

Earlybird is an international venture capital fund with about $300 million under management and investment focus on information technology, telecommunications and healthcare. With offices in Europe (Hamburg, Munich) and the U.S. (Palo Alto), Earlybird is well positioned to take advantage of international opportunities and to assist its portfolio companies to gain access to the international market place and financial resources. Earlybird's investment professionals have extensive finance and start-up operating experience and actively support portfolio companies. In addition, a network of experienced industry specialists serves on the Earlybird advisory board and assists Earlybird and its portfolio companies in providing strategic advice and operational support. Additional information about Earlybird can be found at www.earlybird.com.


About Wellington Partners

Formed in 1991, Wellington Partners invests venture capital in young start-ups throughout Europe in the fields of information and communication technology and life science and numbers among Europe’s most successful early-stage financiers. To date, the Wellington Partners I fund has already returned 1.66 times its subscribed capital. The Munich-based company today manages a total fund volume of € 265 million, with € 85 million of this funding available for new investments. Wellington Partners is presently invested in over 20 companies, including Codetoys (Finland), Covast (Netherlands), EnOcean (Germany), Garderos (Germany) and Maxxio (Germany). Serving as the lead or co-lead investor, the company has already accompanied such successful technology vendors as chipbroker ACG or biotech player Actelion in going public. www.wellington.de


For further information please contact:

Dianoema S.p.A.
Ing. Riccardo Mazzotti / Marketing Director
Via De’ Carracci, 93
40131 Bologna, Italy
Tel: +39 051 4193911
Fax: +39 051 4193900
rmazzotti@dianoema.it
www.dianoema.it

Earlybird
Daniela von Wedel / PR
Van- der- Smissen Str. 3
22767 Hamburg, Germany
Tel: +49-40-432941-0
Fax: +49-40-432941-29
vonwedel@earlybird.com
www.earlybird.com

Wellington Partners
Dr. Rainer Strohmenger / Partner
Theresienstrasse 6
80333 Munich, Germany
Tel.: +49-89-219941-0
Fax: +49-89-219941-98
strohmenger@wellington.de
www.wellington.de