POC Captures Innovation Award

TORRANCE, Calif., March 30, 2006 -- Physical Optics Corp. (POC), a maker of optoelectronic components, received one of the US Army’s Ten Greatest Inventions awards for its wireless personal information carrier system, or WPIC (pronounced "Y-pick").

The award is the result of a small business innovative research program in which four companies were given $100,000 each to develop prototype EICs. The Department of Defense reviewed the designs in July 2004. POC was one of two companies that were given additional funding of $750,000 to continue developing a data storage and retrieval device.

POC’s WPIC, which is the size of a dog tag, holds up to 20 years of medical records, giving medical personnel instantaneous access to data without the need for contact with the patient, for example a wounded soldier. (See also Featured Products, Wireless Personal Information Carrier System.) Advanced compression technology developed by POC is a critical element in the WPIC’s ability to store, read and transmit medical files and images, including radiographic and ultrasound and audio/video data, without any perceptual loss of resolution. Data on a patient's allergies, blood type, doctors’ comments and audiovisual files, can be securely transmitted wirelessly up to 10 yards from the patient.

Timothy J. Rapp, the Army’s wireless EIC program manager, said, "The developers of this wireless device had extremely tough requirements to fulfill. We wanted a highly secure, standardized, wireless storage and retrieval system that would be compatible with our battlefield medical information system telemedicine (BMIS-T) project -- a speech-capable PDA -- and would include visual input and a noise-cancelling microphone. The EIC needs to be small, wireless and interoperable with universal, commercial interfaces such as USB ports in the event wireless connectivity is not available."

POC said the device is well-suited for first responders, medical/hospital providers and a variety of wireless communication systems, in addition to nonmedical and nonmilitary applications in tasks that use wireless encrypted databases and require instantaneous access to information.

For more information, visit: www.poc.com