As many had predicted, 2010 was a year of mergers and acquisitions. Industry insiders expect this reshaping and consolidation will continue apace into 2011 and beyond.
There was M&A action of all kinds in 2010: marquee deals like the Allscripts and Eclipsys alliance; complementary firms that came together for their mutual benefit; smaller companies scooped up by bigger ones; strategic buys, with IT vendors using those new acquisitions to address targeted needs and meet meaningful use requirements. Among some of the more notable deals:
In January, St. Paul, Minn.-based Lawson sought to move its business intelligence solutions deeper into the healthcare landscape, adding integration to its applications with its acquisition of Healthvision, an Irving, Texas-based provider of application integration technology. Of particular interest to the company was Healthvision’s Cloverleaf product, which enables hospitals to connect software applications. Executives said that Lawson’s enterprise software would integrate with Cloverleaf to push clinical, financial and operational information throughout the system.
In February, IBM acquired Initiate Systems, a Chicago-based master data management (MDM) company. The move signaled a significant foray into the MDM sphere for IBM, and company brass said the acquisition would especially play well for its offerings in the healthcare IT field – giving IBM's healthcare clients "a comprehensive solution for delivering the information they need to improve the well-being of patients at a lower cost," said Arvind Krishna, IBM's general manager of information management.
In May, Intuit, the Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, announced its acquisition of Cary, N.C.-based Medfusion, which makes front-office and back-office software designed to improve patient-to-provider communications. The deal, valued at about $91 million, was meant to help the resulting company – Intuit Health – resolve provider and consumer concerns, such as enabling more effective and efficient patient interactions online, accessing and managing personal health information and creating more efficient ways for patients to track their healthcare expenses.
Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Ingenix, the health IT arm of the payer United Health, was especially busy this past summer, making a slew of acquisitions to help it address many facets of a healthcare market changed by HITECH and healthcare reform. Some of its more notable acquisitions included Picis, the Wakefield, Mass. maker of solutions geared for the high-acuity areas of hospitals; Executive Health Resources, of Newtown Square, Pa., which specializes in medical necessity compliance and physician medical management solutions; Axolotl, the San Jose-based provider of health information exchange (HIE) services; and A-Life Medical, the San Diego-based computer-assisted coding company.
In imaging news, Carestream Health announced in September that it would acquire Ronkonkoma, N.Y.-based Quantum Medical Imaging, a privately held manufacturer of X-ray systems used by hospitals, imaging centers and health clinics. With the move, Carestream sought to bolstered itself with a substantial portfolio of conventional and digital X-ray technologies, and better positioned itself to penetrate the small and mid-sized hospital market, enabling Carestream to better serve the specialized imaging needs of community hospitals and clinics worldwide.
That same month, Covisint, the Detroit-based maker of health information exchange technology and services, acquired DocSite, a Raleigh, N.C.-based clinical decision support and quality performance management company, in an all-cash deal. One of the chief benefits of the merger for the 68,000 caregivers on the Covisint platform: improved assistance in helping customers to win stimulus money by providing quality, accountable care.
In October, San Jose-based Vocera, maker of mobile point-of-care communications solutions, snatched up two separate and similar companies: Clinical Health Communications and Integrated Voice Solutions. The Tennessee-based firms bring products and innovations to the table that will help Vocera "ensure patient safety and reduce sentinel events," said Vocera chairman and CEO Bob Zollars, as Vocera simultaneously helps the smaller companies get their products to market.
