NEW YORK – Three months after launching Health Evolution Partners, a private equity firm focused on healthcare investments, David Brailer, MD, and his partners are ready to spend some money – and make some. Brailer detailed their investment strategy last month at the 20th annual Bear Stearns healthcare conference.

First up will be investments ranging from $10 million to $80 million in what Brailer calls “growth stage investment products.” Expect investments, perhaps spin-offs or buyouts, in companies that have already shown considerable growth and positive earnings, Brailer said. The companies of interest to Brailer and his partners represent a broad range of heathcare, information and diagnostic services, he said.

For example, Health Evolution Partners is looking at a company that is helping doctors determine whether to put their patients on antibiotics. The investment firm is also looking at companies that provide devices for monitoring patients at home, an organization that provides a marketplace for radiologists online and others that provide case management services.

Brailer, President Bush’s former healthcare information technology czar, has not dropped IT, but Health Evolution Partners is likely to invest in technology companies that provide more than software.

“We’re looking at companies that solve problems,” Brailer said, “companies that offer a combination of information services – and something else. It’s the synergy of the two.”

“We see enormous potential for healthcare services, technology and information companies in coming years,” Brailer said. “Our strategy is simple – companies that add real value to healthcare’s end users will become market-leading companies and valuable investments to us.”

Health Evolution Partners will also invest about $200 million in early stage companies, but not directly. The equity firm will team up with four to six existing venture capitalists funds.

To form his San Francisco-based investment firm, Brailer teamed up with CalPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement System, which put up $700 million in investment money. CalPERS, the nation’s largest pension fund, reports assets of more than $245 billion. It is the nation’s third largest purchaser of health benefits.

“There are significant investment opportunities in the development of better technology and services in health benefits, which is the fastest-growing industry in the world’s largest economy,” CalPERS CEO Fred Buenrostro said at the launch of Health Evolution Partners last June.

Healthcare Evolution Partners will focus on investing the money at hand before adding other partners and more investment money to the mix, Brailer said at the Bear Stearns conference last month.

“Health Evolution Partners’ insights into purchaser needs, coupled with their public policy and regulatory understanding, gives them a unique capacity to select and guide companies that can change healthcare,” said Peter Lee, president of the Pacific Business Group on Health, a San Francisco-based employer coalition. “They have the relationships needed to not only accelerate adoption of their portfolio companies’ products but to foster healthcare transformation by being purchaser driven.”