Just as we are trying to put the final touches to the forthcoming HIE Market Report, another major HIE vendor gets acquired and again it is a very big fish swallowing a small and very pricey little fish. Geez, they are making our life difficult here at Chilmark.
This morning, Aetna announced that it will acquire Medicity for some $500M. With United Health Group’s Ingenix acquiring Medicity’s top competitor, Axolotl earlier this year and now Medicity being picked up, the HIE market is going through a major upheaval with few, (one could even argue none) strong, independent HIE vendors left.
Chilmark Research will reach-out to both Medicity and Aetna to get their take on this acquisition as well as competing vendors as this really is a pretty big deal for all players in the HIE market.
You had better get your report out soon. Otherwise, you might want to look for space in a payer magazine. Additionally, there have been many changes to the HIE products and solutions. When do you intend to do a refresh?
Congrats to Medicity! That’s a nice payday for them. That’s definitely an issue to have no independent HIE. How many people really want to participate in a payer HIE?
Public healthcare option? Provider-focused? Ha! Seems just the opposite is happening:
Behemoth payers are buying up HIE’s and myriad other anciallary IT products and services.
United Health essentially owns a bank with OptumHealth.
Trizetto is a major player in the payer space and they went private a couple years ago.
Verizon and large data carriers are getting into the game.
What an exciting time to be in the healthcare IT space!