Merge Healthcare signs distribution agreement with PANGAEA Technology

Merge Healthcare (NASDAQ: MRGE), a leading medical imaging solutions provider, today announced that its Merge China business unit has signed a Distribution Agreement with PANGAEA Technology Limited, a distributor of CCD detectors, which are an economical alternative to digital detectors, for DR systems in the Greater China area. PANGAEA will provide the Chinese DR market with a bundled solution consisting of Merge CIE™ (Cedara Image Enhancement) and CCD through their eight offices and wide distribution channels in China.

“After the healthcare reform plan was announced in China early this year, we recognized that there would be large demand for economical DR solutions in the rural healthcare market. Many local modality manufacturers have since switched their product lines to address a cost conscious, big volume market. We believe the CCD sensor and Merge CIE is a solution that will fit into this market perfectly,” explains Mr. Richard Fung, CEO and President of PANGAEA (HK) Limited, which is the parent company of PANGAEA China. “During this preliminary stage of work with Merge China, our customers are quite happy and satisfied with the enhanced images filtered by CIE, the flexibility of the tuning tools, and the timely response through Merge’s local technical team. With Merge’s extensive knowledge and advanced technologies in the medical imaging domain, we expect to dramatically grow our CCD shipment during 2010, and we are looking at the healthcare industry as our key growth market in the future.”

“PANGAEA is a very important distributor in China for our CIE solution,” says Justin Dearborn, Merge CEO. “The quality and cost of the CCD has been well recognized by the market, and PANGAEA’s wide distribution channel and existing customer base has already shown significant interest in the bundled solution. This is a perfect combination of technologies and marketing channels, and we look forward to bringing more of our technologies to their solution in the future.”