SAN ANTONIO, Texas, August 9th, 2001 - Injury Sciences LLC today announced the general availability of a new Internet-based service for claims evaluation. WrExpert™ 4.0 is the first accident and injury causation claims technology and is the premier system for the evaluation of automobile collision severity and the determination of potential for specific injuries resulting from these collisions.

“The claims industry is increasingly conscious of the pitfalls of using broad-based models for injury causation, such as no damage-no injury”, states Scott Palmer, President and CEO of Injury Sciences. “WrExpert™ 4.0 is now the engineeringbased centerpiece technology for the evaluation of claims. It employs forensic sciences to evaluate traditional claim information, such as damage repair estimates, and provides users with objective diagnostics as to negligence, accident severity, and injury causation.”

The application of Internet technology has made the benefits of WrExpert™ 4.0 even more tangible to insurers. Injury Sciences now “hosts” the software for the insurer, taking away the technology issues of hardware/software maintenance, updates for new vehicles and additional injuries, deployment to remote users, and data “mining” for process improvement.

In addition to the hosted application environment, key new features of WrExpert™ 4.0 include:

• Web-browser support for use with all major browser types;
• Automated import of vehicle airbag sensor, or “black box”, data;
• Automated import of physical damage repair estimates; and
• Enhanced data entry processes.

All of these new features enhance a user’s ability to evaluate claims using scientific evidence instead of human speculation.

The automated import of black box data highlights a significant shift in the evaluation of liability and bodily injury claims associated with automobile accidents. “One out of every ten vehicles on the road today has harvestable accident data residing in its black box “ notes Palmer “Based on the increasing number of participating manufacturers and the expanding number of models with harvestable data, this number will increase dramatically. Data from these vehicles represent an objective source of answers to liability and injury questions in a collision event, and WrExpert™ 4.0 makes the evaluation process easy and understandable for the user.”

Last year, Injury Sciences finalized a strategic alliance with ProcessClaims, a leader in Internet-based physical damage repair services. WrExpert™ 4.0 now allows a seamless mechanism for the user to retrieve repair estimates, irrespective of the estimate format, and import that data directly into the application. This alliance, coupled with the ability for WrExpert™ 4.0 to retrieve data directly from various estimate providers, allows for over a 40% reduction in the amount of data entry required to run the application. It now takes users as little as 5 to 10 minutes of data entry to evaluate an accident with WrExpertä 4.0.

WrExpert™4.0 is leading -edge technology. Scott Kidd, Senior Vice-President of Operations for Injury Sciences says, “We developed WrExpert™ 4.0 using the latest Internet technology advances from Microsoft. This flexible, scalable platform allows us to provide our clients with the finest claims evaluation tools without the associated intrusion into information technology departments.”