reserved.

Deutsche Telekom's corporate customer division T-Systems has acquired a stake in Netherlands-based Portavita, provider of disease management system for integrated care of chronic patients, through T-Venture, Deutsche Telekom's venture capital company. Via T-Venture, T-Systems is also taking over shares in the Dutch software developer Mgrid, a partner company of Portavita that specialises in developing software for medical database applications. Under the terms of the exclusive partnership, T-Systems will operate Portavita's web-based software in its own data centres for at least five years and the companies will jointly refine applications, for which T-Systems will make its secure healthcare industry network available. The two companies together plan to customise the Portavita product for the German and other European markets. Together, the partners intend to offer the physician-managed patient record used for the multidisciplinary care of currently 125.000 chronic patients in the Netherlands and in Germany as well. Applications are being developed for patients with chronic congestive heart failure, for outpatient palliative care, and for cardiovascular risk management.

(Distributed for DMeurope.com via M2 Communications (www.m2.com)) .END