Cardinal Health Introduces Central Supply Chain Registry

Dublin, Ohio, November 8, 2004 – Cardinal Health, Inc. (NYSE: CAH), the leading provider of products and services supporting the health care industry, today announced the introduction of SupplyCentralTM, a health care product synchronization database. The SupplyCentral database is a central registry of medical and surgical product information that will increase the accuracy, speed and efficiency of the supply chain for Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs), hospitals, distributors and manufacturers.

“Trading partners within the health care industry need a way to correct, synchronize and update incorrect and erroneous product data -- and the SupplyCentral database is the solution,” said Dwight Winstead, president and COO of Clinical Technologies and Services. “The SupplyCentral database’s ability to lower costs, increase efficiency and reduce the number of errors is a promising value proposition.”

The ability to efficiently, effectively and expeditiously move health care products through the supply chain to the end user is an enormous challenge burdened with hidden costs. According to one recent study, 24 percent of all supply management employee time at hospital and distributor sites is spent on correcting data integrity errors.

Cardinal Health’s SupplyCentral database will reduce the number of invoice errors, out-of-stock incidences, and rework errors as well as the manual resources used to correct them. Both patients and consumers benefit when products and materials are delivered faster and with fewer mistakes.

“Simply stated, this database will give the entire health care supply chain access to an electronic library that also can publish, transmit and download standardized product information,” said Charlie Burwell, senior vice president of strategic development. “As a result, IDNs, distributors, suppliers and manufacturers will be able to minimize the added costs and headaches associated with supply chain errors by efficiently synchronizing health care product information.”

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