IBM to purchase Initiate Systems

IBM, which long ago abandoned plans to develop an electronic medical record, is making a deeper push into health information exchange by agreeing to acquire Initiate Systems. Privately held Initiate produces software to manage data integrity and create master patient indices for the purpose of sharing electronic health information.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though the two companies say they have been collaborating for about five years.

"This is all about growth and synergy," Arvind Krishna, general manager of information management at IBM, said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Initiate's president and CEO, Bill Conroy, said that "IBM's vision meets ours to get to [a global] scale quickly."

A master patient index is a subset of a general IT function called master data management, and InfoWeek reports that several IBM competitors have been beefing up their MDM offerings recently. Initiate Systems offers a "strong and proven" platform for data integration and "best-in-class data de-duplication, security and privacy," one analyst wrote, according to InfoWeek.

For details:
- read this IBM press release
- see this InfoWorld story for a broader perspective
- take a look at this Chicago Sun-Times piece for a local angle on Initiate Systems

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