By John Moore

Acquisition fever has set in and they’re dropping like flies, independent HIE vendors that is. Earlier today, Siemens announced its intent to acquire enterprise HIE vendor MobileMD. So in little over a year we have seen IBM snag Initiate, Axolotl fall into the hands of Ingenix/United Health Group (Ingenix is now known as OptumInsight), Medicity tie the knot with Aetna, Harris pick-up Dept of Defense clinician portal darling Carefx and Wellogic, a damsel in distress, being rescued by Alere. Elsevier also announce an intent to acquire dbMotion for a whooping $310M, but nothing came of that other than a substantiation of the rumor that dbMotion was being shopped.

That does not leave many small, independent HIE vendors that have some traction left in the market. Following is our list of such vendors and what might become of them:

4medica: A relative new comer to the HIE market, 4medica will be profiled for the first time in the upcoming HIE Market Trends Report which is scheduled for release in early 2012. 4medica is quite strong on lab information exchange. Future: 4medica still remains under the radar screen as it completes its platform to truly serve all HIE needs. Once that process is complete, the company is likely to gain increasing attention and will be acquired in 18-14 months.

Care Evolution: Privately owned and self-funded, founder has every intent to stay independent. As he has told us on more than one occasion, I’ve already made plenty of money and this is not about cashing out to the highest bidder. Future: Everyone has a price but this company may be one of the last to fall into the arms of another.

Certified Data Systems: Appliance (think small router with embedded HIE functionality) HIE vendor that has close, yet non-exclusive partnership with Cerner. Would not be surprised if they struck a similar deal with Epic as Epic struggles to connect to EHRs outside its system. Future: Fairly new to the HIE market but gaining traction. Will stay independent for next 12-18 months, after that, anyone’s guess.

dbMotion: One company already made a bid, but pulled back, thus pretty clear this company will be acquired, question is how much and we suspect it will be significantly less than what Elsevier was planning to pay. Future: If price is right, could be acquired at anytime.

HealthUnity: Small HIE vendor from the Pacific Northwest that made a big splash when with Microsoft (Amalga UIS) they won the big Chicago HIE contract. Future: With Microsoft cozying up close to Orion, HealthUnity will be looking hard for other partners and/or to be acquired. Will give them 12-18 months as an independent.

ICA: Another small HIE vendor that has had a few wins here and there but will come under increasing pressure from larger, better funded HIEs. Future: Likely to be acquired in next 6-12 months, maybe even earlier.

ICW: InterComponent Ware is a German HIT company and a sizable one at that with over 600 employees. To date, ICW has a very small presence in the US HIE market so an acquisition, if there were one, would have little impact.  Future: Their foreign ownership, size and interests in several health related markets make them an unlikely candidate for acquisition.

InterSystems: Arms dealer to all, InterSystems Cache and Ensemble are widely used in the market and the company has built upon these core technologies to get into HIE market. Future: Fiercely independent and senior team is basically the same since founding this company will remain independent.

Kryptiq: Having signed a strong partnership deal with Surescripts, Kryptiq is unlikely to be interested in any acquisitions talks. Future: Will remain independent for time being and if Surescripts’ Clinical Interoperability solution gains significant traction, Surescripts will likely acquire Kryptiq outright.

Orion Health: New Zealand-based, privately owned with good prospects in markets beyond America’s shores, this company will likely want to stay independent (future IPO) unless of course a very large software company (think IBM, Microsoft, Oracle etc.) gives them an offer they can’t refuse. Future: Will stay independent.

Getting back to the Siemens/MobileMD deal…

While we have not had an opportunity to talk with either Siemens or MobileMD (will provide follow-on update once we do) here are some quick take-aways:

Siemens has chosen to buy. This is unlike other EHR vendors who have either built their own HIE solution (athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Epic, NextGen) or have partnered with others (Allscripts, Cerner, GE).

Existing partner doesn’t cut it. Siemens has an existing partnership with NextGen for ambulatory but NextGen’s HIE is a closed system. This prevented Siemens from being able to leverage this partnership to serve their client needs, which most often includes a multitude of EHRs in the ambulatory sector to interface with.

Lacked sufficient internal resources. By buying into the market, Siemens has signalled that it does not have the development resources to respond quickly enough to customer demand (not too surprising, Siemens has been struggling in the North American market for sometime). This also signals that they could not find the right partner outside of their NextGen relationship, which is a tad puzzling as we are quite sure they paid a premium for MobileMD.

Paid a premium. We estimated MobileMD sales in 2010 just shy of $8M in our 2011 HIE Market Report. HIE vendors are selling at a premium, even second tier ones such as MobileMD. Assuming industry average growth in 2011 (we peg it at 30%) that would give MobileMD sales of ~$10.5M for 2011. We put the final strike price for MobileMD at $95-110M.

Existing MobileMD customers relived. Unlike the acquisitions of Axolotl and Medicity, which both fell into the hands of payers, MobileMD is going to a fellow HIT vendor which must assuage the fears of more than a few MobileMD customers and prospects. Siemens intends to keep MobileMD whole, bringing on-board MobileMD’s president and founder, again contributing to continuity.

John Moore is an IT Analyst at Chilmark Research, where this post was first published.