Health Catalyst announced Thursday that it will acquire healthfinch, Inc. for an undisclosed sum. The company, based in Madison, Wisconsin, specializes in technologies that enhance and enable efficiencies for electronic health record workflows.
WHY IT MATTERS
The integration engine developed by healthfinch can offer insights into clinical workflows, integrating with the EHR to offer real-time analytics and automate the ability to close gaps in patient care.
Health Catalyst says the acquisition will bolster its population health portfolio, much like its Able Health acquisition back in February– which enabled the launch earlier this month of its new Care Management Suite.
Health Catalyst says healthfinch will round out a new application suite category in its analytics app portfolio, called EMR Embedded Insights.
Tools developed by healthfinch – such as those related to refills, visit planning – will continue to be available in their original configuration, said Health Catalyst, but will also augment workflows across its existing product portfolio, powered by its cloud-based Data Operating System.
Health Catalyst says it will fund the deal with a mix of stock and cash, and expects it to close in Q3 2020.
THE LARGER TREND
Dr. Lyle Berkowitz, longtime clinical informatics pioneer at Northwestern, is the co-founder and chief medical officer of healthfinch, which was launched a decade ago. Its goal, he said in a statement, was to "save immense amounts of physician time monthly, while also improving patient quality via closing gaps in care, minimizing refill errors and speeding up prescription refill turn-around time."
"Fifteen years ago at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Lyle and I formed a lasting friendship and a shared passion around making life better for clinicians and patients," added Health Catalyst Chief Technology Officer Dale Sanders. "Fast forward to today and it has all come full circle. EMRs are everywhere, making decision support much easier to implement. The combined strengths of healthfinch and Health Catalyst will fulfill the vision we share of improving both quality of care for patients and quality of life for physicians."
ON THE RECORD
"We are excited to have the healthfinch leadership team and their talented colleagues join Health Catalyst, and we are grateful for the tremendous insights, knowledge and perspectives they bring, which will accelerate the achievement of our mission to be the catalyst for massive, measurable, data-informed healthcare improvement.
"The healthfinch technology will easily serve up actionable insights, derived from DOS and other Health Catalyst analytics applications into the EMR, at the point of care," he added.
Actionable Intelligence
This month, we look at lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic on how data is put to work informing patient care decisions and population health.
Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
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