This Week in Healthcare IT

M&A, Financial Reports and Funding

U.S. drugstore chain Walgreen will acquire online retailer Drugstore.com for $429 million...Affiliated Computer Services, a business-process outsourcing and IT company, has acquired clinical software provider CredenceHealth for an undisclosed amount...Aramark Healthcare -- a medical equipment and technology management consulting firm -- has acquired Masterplan -- a clinical technology management and medical equipment maintenance company -- for an undisclosed amount...PerkinElmer -- a health care diagnostic and research technology provider -- will pay about $220 million to acquire CambridgeSoft -- a maker of software and database services for the pharmaceutical industry -- and to close a deal to acquire data aggregator platform developer ArtusLabs.
DATATRAK International, a provider of IT systems for clinical trials, reported a FY 2010 net income of $113,000 on $7.391 million in revenue, compared with a FY 2009 net income of $1.898 million on $6.935 million in revenue.
Coinstar, an automated retail software and systems provider, will invest an undisclosed amount in SoloHealth, a health screening and information kiosk provider.
Telehealth company BL Healthcare has raised $4.9 million out of a planned $5.9 million round of equity, options and debt.

Contracts

The Nevada Division of Health Care Financing and Policy has signed a five-year, $176 million contract with HP Enterprise Services to update the state's Medicaid information system...the California Health Information Partnership and Services Organization, a regional extension center, has designated NextGen Healthcare Information Systems as a preferred EHR vendor...FDA has awarded a $39 million contract to GlobalNet Services to support updates to regulatory business information services...Loudoun Medical Group in Virginia has selected EHR technology from Pulse Systems.
Texas-based Baylor Medical Center at Frisco will implement a CPOE system and other products from PatientKeeper...the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services has picked CGI Group to help roll out Medicaid meaningful use incentive payments...Medical Research and Material Command/U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity has contracted systems integrator Evolvent Technologies to provide a range of health IT services...the U.S. government has picked imaging informatics, radiography and speech recognition applications, and other products from Agfa HealthCare for federal agencies...the Foundation for Orthopedics and Complex Spine has chosen CoActiv EXAM-PACS to provide imaging systems at the FOCOS orthopedic hospital in Ghana.
Gila River Health Care in Arizona has selected diabetes care software from InterSystems...Oakwood Healthcare System in Michigan has picked FairWarning patient privacy software...Baptist Health South Florida has selected EHR software from MedLink...the Paperfree Florida Collaborative, a regional extension center, has named Doctors Administrative Solutions as a qualified EHR vendor...HITArkansas, the state's regional extension center, has named Sage Healthcare and SOAPware as preferred EHR vendors...health communications systems developer GeaCom has selected T-Mobile USA's network and Jazz Wireless Data's network management services for its handheld multilingual medical communication system...BayCare Health System in Florida has chosen health information exchange applications from Medicity.

Product Development and Marketing

Health insurer Humana is launching a nationwide pilot project with Intel-GE Care Innovations to leverage telehealth technology to care for members with congestive heart failure...Almac Group, a provider of interactive voice and Web response tools for health care, and Exco InTouch, a mobile phone and Internet-based patient communication systems developer, are integrating their patient management tools...mobile health applications developer Healthagen Partners and Practice Velocity, an urgent care software system, will develop an application for Healthagen's iTriage users to make and register for urgent care visits through Practice Velocity's system.
Online physician community Sermo and Janssen Global Services will develop mobile and Web services to allow physicians to monitor patients throughout the health care system...IT distribution provider Avnet Technology Systems has signed an agreement to distribute Lincor Solutions' hospital point-of-care clinical access and entertainment system...Stat Health Services -- an online medical services company -- is partnering with Emergency Medicine Physicians -- an emergency physician management company -- to expand access to online on-demand health care services.

Personnel

Gregory Church -- former senior vice president of marketing and communications firm InSync Marketing Group -- has been named director of marketing of 4medica, a cloud software-as-a-service clinical integration platform provider...Richard Toren -- chair and president of CodeRyte, a developer of automated billing code technologies -- has been named to the board of directors of Medsphere Systems, a provider of open-source health care enterprise systems...Isabella Cattelan -- former CFO and executive vice president of marketing firm Maritz Canada -- has been named CFO of Healthscreen Solutions, a provider of EHR and physician practice management software.
Kate Dodson -- managing director of global health at the UN Foundation -- has been named executive director of mHealth Alliance, a developer of health IT deployment models; Jennifer Potts -- former deputy director of the Averting Maternal Death and Disability program at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health -- has been named director of the Maternal-newborn mHealth Initiative at the mHealth Alliance...Prognosis Health Information Systems -- a maker of EHR systems -- has named Paul Sinclair -- former senior manager at Ingenix and Cerner -- as COO; Bryan Haardt -- former CTO of medical software developer C-Gate Health -- as executive vice president of technology; and Stephen Payne -- former CFO with WraSer Pharmaceuticals, a pharmaceutical marketing company -- as CFO.


Read more: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2011/3/25/health-it-business-news-roundup-for-the-week-of-march-25-2011.aspx#ixzz1HvqlKFzD