This Week in Healthcare IT

M&A, Financial Reports and Funding

Health & Safety Institute, an emergency response training company, has purchased smart phone application developer GoToAID for an undisclosed amount…Interactive Technology Solutions, a health care consulting firm, has acquired Peace Technology, a developer of website applications, for an undisclosed amount...Epocrates, a developer of clinical information and decision support tools, has acquired Modality, a smart phone medical reference applications publisher, for $13.8 million...German health IT company CompuGroup Medical will acquire the revenue cycle management, physician practice management and ambulatory EHR business lines of HealthPort for $18 million.

The mHealthAlliance recently received a $1 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to use mobile technology to improve health in developing countries...Prognosis Health Information Systems, a community and rural hospital software vendor, has received an unknown minority investment led by equity firm OpenViewPartners.

Contracts

JPS Health Network in Texas has selected TriZetto Group's automated administrative program…CDC selected CIBER, a global IT consulting and outsourcing company, to provide services under the CDC Information Management Services program…CMS has given an estimated $230 million contract to CSC to migrate key IT systems to a new service-oriented architecture...Highmark Medicare Services, an administrative services provider to Medicare, has selected Companion Data Services to provide IT support for a national health care reimbursement system…the Military Health System has selected Vangent, an IT consultant and systems integrator, to enhance an EHR system tool; Vangent also will help deploy health information systems for the Indian Health Service.

Texas Professional Healthcare Alliance has selected an Allscripts' EHR system, offered by Veridian Strategies; SA Health, the public health system of South Australia, selected Allscripts as a preferred vendor…Pennsylvania's two regional extension centers, PA REACH East and PA REACH West, have selected eClinicalWorks, Greenway Medical Technologies and Sage Healthcare as preferred vendors; the Ohio Health Information Partnership, a regional extension center, has selected Allscripts, eClinicalWorks, e-MDs, NextGen Healthcare Information Systems and Sage Healthcare as preferred EHR vendors; Florida-based Baptist Health Care also has selected ambulatory EHR and practice management systems from NextGen.

San Juan Regional Medical Center in New Mexico, Southern New Hampshire Medical Center and Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare in Wisconsin have selected a content management system from CareTech Solutions…HHS has selected federal technology contractor Aquilent to provide services for the agency's Web communications and new-media division…Ulrich Medical Concepts has chosen patient portal software from Intuit Health…North York General Hospital in Canada has chosen clinical decision support software from Zynx Health...West Penn Allegheny Health System in Pennsylvania has selected athenahealth's Web-based revenue cycle management service.

Product Development and Marketing

Ceridian Exchange Systems and eHealth will participate in a winning bid to implement the Florida Health Choices online health insurance exchange...BridgeFront, an online education firm, will partner with Oregon's regional extension center OCHIN/O-HITEC to develop online courses about "meaningful use" standards…the Emergency Nurses Association and McKesson have formed the ED Benchmarks Collaborative, a database allowing hospitals to identify ED trends and compare performance.

IBM and ActiveHealth Management, a subsidiary of Aetna, will partner to provide cloud-based care management services to health care providers in Puerto Rico...TriZetto Group has entered into a strategic partnership with clinical analytics developer MEDai to enhance its care management and value-based applications for members...3M Health Information Systems, a health care software and consulting company, is partnering with IQMax, a health care mobile technology services provider, to develop mobile applications for physician use.

Personnel

Anil Jain -- senior IT executive and managing director of e-Research at the Cleveland Clinic -- has been named CMO of Explorys, a cloud computing software provider…Michael Kamerick -- director of academic research and IT systems at the University of California-San Francisco -- has been named senior director of health systems solutions of Recombinant Data, a health care data warehousing and clinical intelligence services provider…Rick Dean -- former director of North American sales for Microsoft's Health Solutions Group -- has been named vice president of provider sales of Humedica, a clinical informatics company...Karl Wolcott, a sales and marketing executive, has been named vice president of sales and marketing for health IT company iTech Medical.

Brenda Jenkins -- a senior program administrator at Quality Partners of Rhode Island, a health care quality improvement company -- has been selected as a member of the Health IT Competency Task Force under the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT...The Department of Veterans Affairs' Office of the CIO has named Stan Lowe as IT ombudsman at the Veterans Benefits Administration, Chuck Hume as IT ombudsman at the Veterans Health Administration and Jackie Patillo as IT ombudsman at VA headquarters.
Kevin Hutchinson, president and CEO of e-prescribing and care communication services provider Prematics, has been named to the board of directors at health care interoperability services provider dbMotion...Physicians Interactive Holdings, a provider of clinical decision support tools, has named Brett Miller, former chief marketing officer of online trading network FX Solutions, as president of PIH's mobile division, Skyscape; Sandeep Shah, chief innovation officer, as chief content officer; and Marlene Galante, a marketing professional, as general manager of academic centers, associations and centers of professional excellence.


Read more: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2010/11/19/health-it-business-news-roundup-for-the-week-of-november-19-2010.aspx#ixzz16DTVmuzQ