The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is taking another step in a quest to commercialize new medical technology.
UPMC on Monday signed a three-year deal with health care information technology provider Cerner Corp. to develop and market medicine-related technological advances. Both parties will contribute $10 million in cash, services and intellectual property to the effort.
The deal is a smaller version of an April 2005 deal between UPMC and information technology behemoth IBM.
As is the case in the IBM deal, UPMC will serve as a built-in proving ground for jointly developed technologies and products, with Cerner marketing the products and UPMC awarded a share of profits.
"Through collaborations like this one (with Cerner), we can help transform the delivery of health care industrywide while creating new revenue to support UPMC's core clinical and research mission," said Dan Drawbaugh, UPMC's chief information officer.
Cerner, of Kansas City, Mo., is considered one of the country's leading health care information technology providers and has invested more than $1.2 billion in research and development over the last decade. It plans to invest a comparable amount by 2011. Cerner and UPMC have worked together for more than five years on projects designed to enhance safety and quality of care throughout UPMC's system.
The UPMC-IBM joint venture, announced one year ago, has been very quiet outside the organizations' facilities. The first six to nine months of the pact were spent building the infrastructure needed to convert UPMC's nine operating divisions into fewer than four.
As announced, UPMC and IBM agreed to an eight-year, $402 million joint development pact, which, if successful, will save the medical complex as much as $1 billion per year. In addition, each partner is expected to invest as much as $100 million to commercialize new medical technologies and information systems. That effort intends to recoup UPMC's investment while bringing more investment and jobs to Western Pennsylvania.
The two-part agreement includes $352 million UPMC is paying to completely re-do its technology infrastructure with IBM hardware, software and services, allowing all of its facilities to have near-instant access to a patient's information.
"We still have 24 months of conversions to go, and we are on target," said Paul Sikora, UPMC's vice president for enterprise transformation.
Larger text
Smaller text
Print this article
E-mail this article
