Philips Acquires Clinical Information System Company

Philips Healthcare (Best, The Netherlands) announced that it has agreed to acquire Wheb Sistemas (Blumenau, Brazil), a provider of clinical information systems (CIS) inn Brazil.

This acquisition marks the next step in the execution of Philips Healthcare's strategy to expand its clinical informatics range with solutions that increase its ability to meet the diverse and growing needs of the different markets around the world. It follows the March 2010 acquisition of Tecso Informatics (Rio de Janeiro), one of Brazil's leading radiology information systems (RIS) firms, and August 2010's agreement to acquire the business of CDP Medical, Ltd. (Kiriat Arie Petach Tikva, Israel), a provider of picture archiving and communication systems (PACS).

"The acquisition of Wheb, the third clinical informatics acquisition in recent months, is another important step on our journey to complete our global portfolio of clinical informatics and patient care solutions that simplify clinician workflow, improve financial outcomes for our customer and help improve and save lives,” said Steve Rusckowski, CEO for Philips Healthcare. "As with the other recent deals in this space, also the acquisition of Wheb helps us to further strengthen our offering especially geared towards facilitating high-growth markets such as Latin America.”

Founded in 1999, Wheb has approximately 190 employees and installations in more than 230 hospitals. Clinical informatics systems integrate information among various hospital departments (e.g., radiology, cardiology), and they serve an increasingly vital role in today's healthcare environment as the need to streamline workflow and manage costs, all while providing high-quality care, is universally chief in mind for governments, insurers, hospital administrators, and medical teams. Wheb will become part of Philips Healthcare's patient care and clinical informatics business.

The acquisitions of both Tecso and Wheb make Philips one of Brazil's leading clinical informatics companies. This enables Philips to bring specifically sophisticated clinical decision support to the Brazilian market. Philips has already expanded its healthcare business in this market in recent years with the acquisitions of Dixtal Biomédica e Tecnologia, a leading Brazilian manufacturer of in-hospital patient monitoring, in 2008 and VMI-Sistemas Medicos, a Brazilian imaging diagnostic company, in 2007.

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