Boston, MA — October 21, 2005 — Covington Associates LLC announced today that it acted as the buy-side advisor to Alere Medical Incorporated ("Alere") in its acquisition of the disease management business of National Jewish Medical and Research Center ("National Jewish"); including their programs for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Based in Reno, Nevada, Alere is a provider of integrated, condition-specific disease management services. Under the agreement, Alere will continue to operate the newly acquired disease management programs under the National Jewish Medical and Research Center name, as well as open up a respiratory services nursing call center in Denver. National Jewish's asthma and COPD management programs are nationally recognized, and the Center has been named the country's number one respiratory hospital by U.S. News. Together, asthma and COPD affect an estimated 32 million Americans.

This marks Alere's second transaction of 2005, the first, in June, was a long term disease management contract with PacifiCare Health Systems, Inc. (NYSE: PHS). Alere, as a result of the transaction, is now able to provide a more effective alternative to the generic "one-stop-shop" disease management vendors. The agreement with PacifiCare expands Alere's offerings to include kidney disease as well as asthma and COPD.

According to Ron Geraty, CEO of Alere, "We've been very interested in moving beyond our proven approach for heart failure to providing disease management for all high-prevalence and high-cost diseases. We see the addition of National Jewish to the Alere family of disease management programs as integral to our plans for firmly establishing ourselves as a diversified and nationally recognized disease management company."

Benjamin Dunn, a Managing Director at Covington Associates and lead advisor to Alere on both transactions, was quoted as saying "Alere's acquisition of National Jewish's renowned respiratory disease management programs, along with its acquisition of PacifiCare's DM unit earlier this year serve to further cement Alere's position as the leading disease management company with best of breed solutions in multiple disease states."

About Alere Medical, Inc.
Alere Medical Incorporated is a leader in services that integrate objective and subjective data to produce actionable information that supports physicians' practices a nd improve adherence and compliance with their treatment plans. Alere Medical's unique combination of at-home monitoring, pharmacy benefit monitoring, patient stratification technology, empowering education, and daily review by caring clinical professionals provides the physician with patient-specific provider alerts that are actionable, timely, and validated. This results in positive clinical outcomes, greatly reduced hospitalizations, substantial cost savings, and high levels of client and patient satisfaction.

About Covington Associates LLC
Covington Associates is a specialty investment banking firm founded in 1991 serving technology, healthcare, consumer, industrial and business services companies throughout the world. Focused on debt and equity capital raising, debt and equity restructuring, mergers and acquisitions and strategic advisory assignments for middle market companies, Covington Associates has completed transactions ranging in value from $10 million to over $1 billion for both private and publicly traded companies. To learn more about Covington Associates, visit www.covingtonassociates.com.



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