IBM has announced its purchase of Initiate Systems, the Chicago master data management (MDM) company. The move signals a further foray into the MDM sphere for IBM. Executives say the acquisition will better establish IBM's offerings to the healthcare IT field.

The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition will help give IBM's healthcare clients "a comprehensive solution for delivering the information they need to improve the well-being of patients at a lower cost," said Arvind Krishna, IBM's general manager of information management.

MDM software allows firms to centrally organize customer, employee, product, supplier, and account data for enterprise-wide use. In purchasing Initiate – barely a week after its competitor Informatica acquired the MDM firm Siperian – IBM hopes to better enable government to share information across multiple agencies and also offer healthcare companies more efficient and consistent access to clinical data.

"In the U.S. alone, there's $36 billion in government stimulus funds to facilitate the adoption of electronic health records and health information networks," said Krishna. "Both being places where Initiate's solutions play strongly."

See John Moore's blog post for more information about what this deal means.