Six months after scooping up the health analytics assets of IBM Watson Health, private equity firm Francisco Partners announced this past week that it is using them to launch a new healthcare data company, called Merative.

WHY IT MATTERS
Francisco Partners says Merative will combine these assets to help "deliver value across the global healthcare ecosystem, serving clients in life sciences, provider, imaging, health plan, employer, and government health and human services sectors."

Merative's products will be focused across six areas, according to Francisco Partners, bolstered with new resources for investment, acquisitions, partnerships and growth:

• Health Insights

• MarketScan

• Clinical Development

• Social Program Management and Phytel

• Micromedex

• Merge Imaging

Gerry McCarthy, who was previously CEO of Francisco portfolio company eSolutions and has served as president of TransUnion Healthcare and as an executive at McKesson, has been chosen to lead Merative.

"Merative has market-leading products, top clients and talented leadership," he said. "With the commitment, support and deep experience of Francisco Partners, we will invest heavily in expanding the reach of these products as we continue to work with clients to improve healthcare delivery, decision-making and performance."

THE LARGER TREND
IBM announced the deal this past January to sell off the healthcare data and analytics assets of its Watson Health business to Bay Area-based Francisco Partners. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed at the time, but Bloomberg reported the price tag to be more than $1 billion. 

The PE firm – with some $30 billion in assets and two decades of investments in digital health companies, such as Availity, GoodRx and Zocdoc – said it would use the "extensive and diverse" datasets and technology products it acquired to launch a stand-alone company to serve provider, imaging, life sciences, payer and other healthcare clients.

IBM, meanwhile, was able to shift away from the underperforming Watson business and put more resources toward its ''maniacal focus" on hybrid cloud development.

ON THE RECORD
"Francisco Partners is excited about the opportunity to partner with the team and employees at Merative to help them achieve their mission, bringing technology and expertise to clients across healthcare through industry-leading data and analytics solutions," said Ezra Perlman and Justin Chen of Francisco Partners. "We appreciate IBM's work in developing this business, and our ownership will help Merative drive crucial focus in executing on organic and inorganic growth strategies."

Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
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