BeneChill's RhinoChill IntraNasal Cooling System Wins 2012 MEDTEC EMDT Innovation Award

15 March 2012 – The RhinoChill® IntraNasal Cooling System has received one of the European medical device industry’s most prestigious awards.

The RhinoChill system has won the Critical Care and Emergency Medicine Product of the Year category prize in the MEDTEC EMDT Innovation Awards. These are the only European awards dedicated to recognizing achievements in this sector.

According to EMDT, “RhinoChill enables noninvasive rapid brain cooling in an emergency setting without interfering with the resuscitation effort. The technology makes use of the body’s natural heat exchanger, the nasal cavity, to rapidly cool the brain. It improves on existing devices because of its portability, ease of use, low power requirements and the fact that it requires no refrigeration.”

Despite being successfully resuscitated, two out of three people who suffer a cardiac arrest die as a result of brain damage. Therapeutic hypothermia – a medically-induced lowering of body temperature – has been shown to improve survival rates and quality of life for resuscitation survivors. However, for every hour’s delay in initiation of brain cooling, the risk of death increases by 20%.

RhinoChill is an easy-to-use, non-invasive portable cooling system which enables effective therapeutic hypothermia to be initiated as early as possible following cardiac arrest: even before the return of normal circulation. It has been shown to help preserve the brains of cardiac arrest victims.

“Winning this award is a tremendous achievement for RhinoChill”, commented BeneChill CEO Fred Colen. “A distinguished panel of judges selected our device from a very strong field of entrants, reinforcing our belief that RhinoChill represents a significant advance in the field of critical care and emergency medicine”.

The category winners in the MEDTEC EMDT Innovation Awards were announced yesterday during a special ceremony at MEDTEC Europe in Stuttgart, Germany. With over 1000 exhibiting companies and more than 13,500 attendees, MEDTEC Europe is by far the largest exhibition of its kind, providing a showcase for the next generation of medical devices.

For further information, please contact:

Richard Kenyon, RKPR: +44 7831 569940; richard@rkpr.co.uk

About BeneChill, Inc.

BeneChill is a medical device company based in San Diego, California with European headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. The company is developing therapeutic hypothermia products with a focus on early, rapid, non-invasive cooling for use in the field. BeneChill’s lead product, the RhinoChill® IntraNasal Cooling System, has CE Mark approval for inducing therapeutic hypothermia immediately following cardiac arrest, and is now available in most major European markets following a distribution agreement with Physio-Control.

Although BeneChill is working to obtain US approval, the company’s products have not been approved by the FDA and are currently not available in the USA.

Investors in BeneChill include MedVenture Associates, NGN Capital, Healthcap Ventures, Physio Control, Intuitive and the Solon Foundation.

More information can be found at www.benechill.com

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