Siemens to Sell Hospital IT Business?

This is some interesting news for the hospital health IT world:

Siemens (SIE) AG is exploring a sale of its hospital database and information-technology unit to focus on energy and industrial businesses, according to two people familiar with the plans.

The German engineering company is evaluating options for the business, and no final decision has yet been made, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the considerations are private. The unit could be valued at more than 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion), said one of the people.

Siemens Chief Executive Officer Joe Kaeser is seeking to focus Siemens around “electrification, automation and digitalization” and has already sold off $2.3 billion euros since late 2012. It seems like Siemens healthcare product line fits great with the digitalization focus, so there’s likely more to the story. My guess is the Siemens healthcare business hasn’t been doing well (Thank you Cerner and Epic) and so he’s looking to get out while there’s still some value in the business.

If you’re a Siemens healthcare customer, you probably welcome this change as well. Hopefully a sale will infuse the company and the product with a new energy that will produce some better results for their customers. Maybe I’m talking to the wrong people, but those I’ve met on Sorian are basically ho-hum about the product. No doubt it will be interesting to watch.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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