MEDecision to Acquire HxTechnologies, Inc.

WAYNE, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MEDecision, Inc., a leading provider of collaborative health care management solutions, today announced that it has entered into a letter of intent to acquire HxTechnologies, Inc. (HxTI) for an undisclosed amount. HxTI is a health information exchange (HIE) company that specializes in enabling the seamless and secure flow of clinical data among health care stakeholders. Closing of the transaction is expected in the second quarter of 2009 subject to negotiation of a definitive purchase agreement.

“MEDecision and HxTI are an exceptional fit in our combined ability to immediately offer providers, payers and patients the interoperable, meaningful and sustainable health information exchanges and solutions they are increasingly demanding”

The transaction allows MEDecision to imbed HxTI’s extensive set of HIE technologies into its Alineo™ collaborative health care management platform and Nexalign™ advanced health information exchange service. Doing so will augment Alineo’s analytics capabilities, enabling more precise patient identification, gaps in care recognition, and clinical summary and treatment plan development. The technology will further extend Nexalign’s ability to assemble and deliver actionable, real-time clinical information — including diagnostic-quality medical images — and simplify its interoperability with other systems.

Adding HxTI’s capabilities to Alineo and Nexalign further extends MEDecision’s ability to generate and deliver real-time actionable information needed to provide meaningful and interoperable electronic health records (EHRs), which President Obama has challenged the industry to create for all Americans within five years. The president included $19 billion for this purpose in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“The president’s endorsement of health IT has the market moving quickly, and the acquisition of HxTI keeps us in pace with that change,” said Scott A. Storrer, president and COO at MEDecision. “HxTI gives us additional resources and abilities to achieve our goal of becoming the industry standard in collaborative health care management by offering smarter content, expanded access and simplified collaboration. With HxTI, and some possible future transactions, we will continuously enhance our solutions to take advantage of the market’s growing opportunities.”

HxTI is one of the industry’s HIE pioneers and has made the most of its head start by developing and refining a comprehensive software platform and key intellectual property. Its iHistory^® HIE platform offers a complete, end-to-end solution for gathering scattered clinical data from — and delivering a unified, patient-centric view to — physicians and ancillary providers integrated with clinical workflow. iHistory provides all of the components required for robust, scalable, multi-vendor HIEs. It can be configured to offer an EHR, personal health record (PHR), or both. The platform supports federated, centralized and hybrid HIE network structures to be built in connection with state and federal initiatives. Furthermore, with this transaction, MEDecision acquires HxTI’s patent on the electronic management of patient authorizations to share health information and multiple other patents pending in the field of health information exchange, including its invention of the record locator service.

HxTI’s iHistory platform is the most comprehensive and proven implementation of IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) interoperability standards for cross-enterprise exchange. In the U.S. and around the world, IHE compliance is increasingly a requirement for plug-and-play interoperability with clinical systems from hundreds of established health care IT vendors. HxTI is distinguished and recognized by its peers for production-ready, vendor-neutral HIE infrastructure that has successfully connected dozens of EMR, PACS, RIS and other clinical applications to share with one another and has served as the backbone for numerous interoperability showcases, including those at the annual HIMSS and RSNA meetings.

Adding HxTI’s technology to its existing platform will produce a number of immediate benefits for MEDecision. First, it will enable the company to bring to market a first-of-its-kind medical management module for radiology that includes electronic exchange of a patient’s imaging among care providers, enhancing quality of care, while targeting the $6 billion spent annually on unnecessary repeat exams. It will also bolster Nexalign’s real-time information exchange capability to support the patient-centered medical home care delivery model and will bring real-time data from physicians and ancillary care providers to MEDecision’s analytics process for the formulation of advanced electronic health records.

“MEDecision and HxTI are an exceptional fit in our combined ability to immediately offer providers, payers and patients the interoperable, meaningful and sustainable health information exchanges and solutions they are increasingly demanding,” noted Dr. Elliot Menschik, founder and president of HxTechnologies, Inc.

“In many respects, this deal is MEDecision doing what it has always done, which is leading the way in health information technology innovation,” added Storrer. “Change is taking place in the health care industry, and MEDecision is not a company that waits to see what happens. We want to ensure that we have all of the necessary assets and capabilities in place to be at the forefront of that change, so we’re prepared for the possibilities it brings.”

MEDecision is exhibiting in booth #2015 at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2009 Conference and Exhibition, April 4–8 at McCormick Place in Chicago. For more information about MEDecision, please visit www.MEDecision.com, and subscribe to an RSS feed at http://www.MEDecision.com/blog/.

Recent News and Resources

MEDecision Issues Call to Partner with Health IT Vendors to Distribute Its Real-time, Actionable Electronic Health Records: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/medecision/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090331006154&newsLang=en

MEDecision EHRs Meet Obama’s $19B Health Care IT Challenge: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/medecision/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090330005797&newsLang=en

MEDecision’s Alineo Collaborative Health Care Platform Deployed at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/medecision/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090309005294&newsLang=en

MEDecision Blog: http://www.MEDecision.com/blog

MEDecision Webinars: http://www.medecision.com/Webinar

MEDecision 2009 User Conference, May 6-8: http://www.medecision.com/user_conference/Content.aspx

About HxTechnologies

HxTechnologies (HxTI) is a health information exchange company that partners with payers and providers to unlock the value of clinical data scattered across disparate healthcare organizations. HxTI improves the quality, safety and cost of care by giving payers, providers and patients unified, electronic access to medical history and results drawn from multiple care providers, on-demand and in real-time.

About MEDecision

MEDecision offers collaborative health care management solutions that provide a simplified and smart way to manage the health of members and member populations which can improve the quality and affordability of care. Based on state-of-the-art technology, MEDecision's solutions include Alineo™, a collaborative health care management platform for managing case, disease and utilization management and Nexalign™, a collaborative health care information exchange service. MEDecision believes that, in the aggregate, its health care payer customers insure or manage care for approximately one in every six people in the U.S. with health insurance. For more information, please visit www.MEDecision.com.

MEDecision is a trademark of MEDecision, Inc. The MEDecision logo and product names are also trademarks or registered trademarks of MEDecision, Inc. Other product and brand names are trademarks of their respective owners.