GE’s Acquisition of IDX Systems Corporation Now Complete
GE Healthcare and IDX made public their agreement to merge on September 29, 2005. Today the two companies announce in this press release that the acquisition is completed (the agreed valuation was about $1.2 billion). The purpose of the acquisition is to strengthen GE’s ability to provide comprehensive electronic health record (EHR) solutions which have yet to make inroads in most hospitals. GE Healthcare is a $15 billion unit of General Electric Company but unlike its American parent company, it’s headquartered in the UK (IDX’ main office is located in the state of Vermont but its worldwide offices are in London).
One of IDX’ most significant contracts was first announced in April 2004 within the UK NHS Connecting for Health project for the next decade. The project had a bumby ride as Fujitsu, the prime contractor in charge of implementation for the south of England decided in June 2005 to replace IDX’s Carecast product with Cerner’s Millennium product (see more details from e-Health Insder). Then in July NHS IT director general Richard Granger voiced his disappointment with BT and IDX in light of their slow implementation of the system in London. Since the total system is far from being thoroughly rolled out it will be interesting to see how things evolve under GE’s stewardship.
January 4, 2006 Related topics: Partnerships & Consortia, Mergers & Acquisitions, Contract Awards, IT & software