ACS launches its health card reader eH880 for the world market

HONG KONG, May 15, 2009 – Advanced Card Systems Ltd. (ACS, wholly owned subsidiary of Advanced Card Systems Holdings Ltd., SEHK: 8210), Asia Pacific’s number one supplier of PC-linked smart card readers, launches its eH880 Secure Smart Card Terminal and its Software Development Kit (SDK) for the world e-Health market.

A digitalized system for managing information provides the obvious benefits of reduced storage space, pen and paper costs and margin of human error as well as increased search capabilities and added data security. While most industries have taken advantage of digitization since years ago, the health-care sector is finally welcoming this change:

Given its history of innovation, the health-care sector has been surprisingly reluctant to embrace information technology (IT). Whereas every other big industry has computerized with gusto since the 1980s, doctors in most parts of the world still work mainly with pen and paper. But now, in fits and starts, medicine is at long last catching up…. [It] is likely to be transformed by the introduction of electronic health records that can be turned into searchable medical databases, providing a “smart grid” for medicine that will not only improve clinical practice but also help revive drugs research. (The Economist, April 18, 2008)

ACS firmly believes that the trend for health data will continue to go digital. ACS has been investing in the research and development in readers and cards tailored to the use in the e-health card programs for the world, and the eH880 Secure Smart Card Terminal (eH880) is the fruit of such tremendous efforts.

The eH880 is a feature-rich secure smart card terminal dedicated to the multicard-based electronic healthcare programs. This innovative device is capable of facilitating secure mutual authentication between two parties, for example, between doctors and patients. It displays detailed multi-layered information from one card or both cards, and facilitates data recording and transference through both private and public network infrastructures. Built on a 32-bit ARM 9 processor running on embedded Linux, the eH880 provides strong third party programming flexibility to system integrators to ensure the efficiency and quality in developing customized applications.

To help application developers understand and use the state-of-the-art terminal more quickly, ACS is also introducing the eH880 Software Development Kit (eH880 SDK). The package includes an eH880 terminal, 25 testing cards, all necessary API documents, utility tools, demo programs and sample codes of ANSI C. With the help of these tools, application developers can start developing right away!

About ACS

Advanced Card Systems Ltd. (ACS, wholly owned subsidiary of Advanced Card Systems Holdings Ltd., SEHK: 8210), founded in 1995, is Asia Pacific’s number one supplier of PC-linked smart card readers (Source: Frost & Sullivan). One of a select group of global companies at the forefront of the smart card revolution, ACS develops a wide range of high quality smart card reading/writing devices, smart cards and related products and distributes them to over 100 countries worldwide. Visit ACS at www.acs.com.hk.