MILFORD, OH; FEBRUARY 6, 2007 --- Hitachi Medical Corporation (HMC) has received from its parent organization, Hitachi Ltd., the 2006 Innovation Award recognizing the most innovative product and process developed for the year. Hitachi Medical received the award for the multi-modality console product line that will enable the company to deploy common capabilities across all medical imaging product lines. Each year Tokyo based Hitachi Ltd. recognizes great achievements in technologies and products.

Rendell Hughes, ITI Sr. Executive Consultant explains: "Driven by ITI�s CPPD process the joint Hitachi Medical and ITI team deployed a systematic methodology to capture customer requirements that drive market growth, develop product targets, analyze and design software, deploy upfront integration and testing and validate the product with customers before the product is finished. Over a thirty six month period, ITI�s team lead HMC in the transition from a C, Unix, single developer based environment to a C++, C# and .Net based development environment that supports a global concurrent development with outsourcing suppliers. HMC achieved a remarkable reduction down to almost 60% in time to market with significantly high level of quality as a result."

Almost 60 imaging centers in North American and 140 hospitals in Japan were involved in defining product capabilities that are critical for Radiologist and Technicians to support diagnosis with high image quality and fast patient throughput. Future customers evaluated the product and engineers were making final improvements 12 months before FDA approval. Testing started on the same day that coding started to ensure that this large complex system would meet quality and performance targets when the last line of code was implemented. This process ensures that our clients have a design and an implementation that always satisfies the customers and end users.

The console in conjunction with 1.5T closed MRI system received FDA approval in November 2005 and was shipped in July, 2006, as a first product.

About Hitachi Medical Corporation
Hitachi Medical Corporation is a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd -- a global $80 Billion corporation with over 300,000 employees in a group. Hitachi Medical Corporation is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, and a leading supplier of medical imaging equipment, including, without limitation, MRI systems, CT scanner systems, Ultrasound diagnostic systems, and X-ray systems.

About ITI
Headquartered in Milford, Ohio (USA), ITI is the world�s leading provider of consulting, software products and related integration services that enable clients to dramatically improve their product and manufacturing process development capabilities. The Company�s Best Practices for New Product Development have evolved to help companies in almost every industry reduce time to market, reduce development cost and ensure hit products before significant investments have been made.