Best of Year Award is Steelcase Health’s Third Major Industry Award for 2008

Steelcase Health Wins Interior Design Magazine’s “Best Of Year” Award For Sync Caregiver Workspace Solution

New York – December 5, 2008 – Steelcase Health, a leading manufacturer of furniture for healthcare environments, has earned Interior Design’s “Best of Year Award” in the healthcare furniture category for its new caregiver workspace solution, SYNC, awarded at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

SYNC addresses the emerging needs of caregivers and clinical environments by seamlessly connecting people to technology and people to people work processes. Whether in a centralized or decentralized, new construction or retro-fit environment, SYNC caregiver stations offer highly flexible and customizable ergonomic solutions that embraces ever increasing technology demands.SYNC is a modular solution, it can be moved and re-used or reconfigured as needs change.

SYNC was designed in collaboration with HDR Architecture, Inc., a renowned leader and innovator in healthcare design.

“We’re particularly proud that this product was singled out for recognition. We feel SYNC brings significant design innovation and functionality to the healthcare environment,” said Alan Rheault, director of industrial design for Steelcase Health.

SYNC addresses the new needs of what used to be called centralized and decentralized nurse’s stations. These needs were identified via the combination of the extensive experience of HDR Architecture and Steelcase Health’s thorough research.

Steve LaHood, Vice President and Director of Product Development of HDR Architecture, Inc. said, “We were excited to collaborate with Steelcase Health to bring to life our vision for a line of flexible furniture systems that would address the emerging needs of caregivers. It was rewarding to work with a manufacturer who embraced a fresh approach to the typical nurse’s stations.”

The Interior Design “Best of Year Awards” honor exceptional interior design products and projects in more than 50 categories. A jury of peers judges the competitors, as the voting is restricted to members of the design community.

“Earning a Best of Year Award is a tremendous honor for Steelcase Health. It reinforces our commitment to research-based solutions and our effort to continuously strive to offer the highest quality products,” said Michael Love, president of Steelcase Health. “It’s gratifying that esteemed industry colleagues recognized our innovative product design in the healthcare industry.”

This is the third major industry award for Steelcase Health in 2008. Additionally this year, the healthcare furniture manufacturer collected a “Gold” award in the “Best of NeoCon” competition, as well as a Nightingale Award for SYNC at the Healthcare Design 08 conference.

Steelcase Health won the first two of three consecutive “Gold” awards in the healthcare furniture category at the 2006 and 2007 “Best of NeoCon” competitions and the first of back-to-back Nightingale Awards at the Healthcare Design conference in 2007.

Steelcase Health officially launched as a company in 2006, but the company is not new to healthcare. Years of research and partnerships with leading healthcare providers and organizations such as HDR, allow the company to tailor a wide variety of environmental solutions to specific settings.

The Steelcase Health family of companies provides a comprehensive product portfolio that supports a wide variety of healthcare environments.

About Steelcase Health

Steelcase Health is a company focused on healthcare environments and how products within these environments can help make them more comfortable, efficient and conducive to the healing process. For more information, visit Health.

Contacts

Libby Ferin
616.248.7038
eferin@steelcase.com

Michael Pflughoeft
414.270.7136
mpflughoeft@laughlin.com