Siemens Healthineers is acquiring Conworx Technology, the Berlin-based developer of point-of-care device interfaces and data management solutions.

“As hospitals consolidate and acquire physician offices, there is a huge need by emerging health care networks for seamless integration of hundreds of decentralized devices that are spread across dozens of sites,” Peter Koerte, president, Point of Care Diagnostics, Siemens Healthineers, said in a statement.

“It is clear to us that to satisfy our customers’ needs, we must deliver solutions that ensure superb connectivity, no matter which analyzer is being connected," he added. "We are determined to continue Conworx’s practice of working closely with every vendor to ensure that all connected analyzers are working to the best of their ability.”

The buy builds Siemens' informatics presence and underscores its strategic direction “to enable health care providers around the world to meet their current and evolving challenges and to excel in their respective environments,” noted the company.

The Conworx suite, including UniPOC and POCcelerator, “complements” the Siemens Healthineers award-winning RAPIDComm Data Management System, and “will elevate the informatics offerings for the point-of-care market by delivering open connectivity for more than 100 different instruments from all major manufacturers,” advised Siemens.

The deal makes Conworx a wholly-owned subsidiary of Siemens – and its 75 workers will merge with the major-OEM to become Siemens Healthineers Point of Care Informatics – to be led by Roman Rosenkranz, the current CEO of Conworx.

“By joining with Siemens Healthineers, we will get access to a global organization to even better support our joint customer base,” said Rosenkranz. “Together we will be able to develop leading informatics products that help our customers to manage their growing point-of-care networks now and in the future.”

Among the driving forces for consolidation in the health care field, as exemplified by this latest deal, are regulatory and economic issues that require maximal optimization derived from increasingly integrated information flow from the point-of-care through the entire health care system.

“Siemens Healthineers and Conworx will deliver open connectivity offerings that will enable seamless data integration from any manufacturer’s point-of-care analyzer, managed by a single informatics solution, to streamline operations and access to data, and improve risk management,” stated the company.

Siemens closed the deal in late October.

Siemens Healthineers was in the news earlier this month when it announced a cooperation agreement with SyntheticMR AB, making the SyMRI software packages from SyntheticMR compatible with MR scanners from Siemens, and available to their customers.

“I am very pleased to be able to present Siemens Healthineers, one of the globally market-leading MRI vendors, as a partner to SyntheticMR. Through this cooperation, we can now offer the clinical benefits of SyMRI also to Siemens customers, expanding our available market significantly. I look forward to continued collaboration that both companies will benefit from,” Stefan Tell, CEO of SyntheticMR, said in a statement at the time.

SyMRI, which offers multiple, adjustable contrast images and quantitative data from a single scan, is offered in three different packages. One for improved workflow, one for automatic decision support in brain tissue imaging, and one for exporting quantitative T1, T2, and PD maps of the brain.

In October, Siemens and IBM made news with an announcement that they had inked a five-year global partnership to take on the challenges of the multibillion-dollar population health management sector. Siemens acquired a powerful data-crunching ally and IBM — and its artificial intelligence prodigy, Watson — gained a VIP point-of-entry into the vast hospital market.

"We will bring the power of Siemens Healthineers' extensive relationships with providers and our deep domain expertise in clinical workflows, services, and digital health technologies to bear to help bring population health management offerings to health care providers," said Matthias Platsch, head of Services at Siemens Healthineers.

"The new alliance fits perfectly into the services business of Siemens Healthineers," he added. "Thus, we will enter the rapidly growing population health management market, which is expected to play a significant role in end-to-end value-based health care."