March 30, 2001 — MENTOR, OH — STERIS Corporation has announced that it will be involved in a new and exciting venture with HealthSouth Corporation, Oracle Corporation and other forward-thinking partners, to build a precedent-setting all-digital automated hospital.

The project will utilize STERIS expertise, service and state-of-the-art products with those of the other contributors to create a highly streamlined and efficient facility capable of offering patients the most technologically automated approach intended to lower costs and provide the best and most effective treatments and procedural outcomes.

STERIS plans to provide a wide array of sterilization, decontamination and therapy support products and services to the digital hospital project. This will assure consistent and reliable biodecontamination and sterility at the new facility. STERIS’s products will be integrated into the technological infrastructure and operations of the automated hospital. The Company’s technologies are used in today’s healthcare facilities around the world, and aid in responding to bacterial infections and antibiotic-resistant organisms, increasing the safety of surgical procedures.

Commenting on the hospital of the future, Les C. Vinney, STERIS’s President and Chief Executive Officer, said, “STERIS’s involvement with the digital hospital project reflects its dedication to operating at the frontier of healthcare research and automation. In addition to our own development activities, we are constantly looking for opportunities to advance our product technologies by joining together with customers and other healthcare organizations. Our goal is to develop products and services that are operator- friendly, technologically advanced, and which improve the overall efficiency of healthcare facilities. It is therefore a natural fit for us to play an integral part in this forward-looking project.”