Deloitte Consulting announced Monday it has closed on a deal to acquire Recombinant Data Corporation, a Newton, Mass.-based healthcare data warehousing and analytics firm. The move signals the growing momentum toward using clinical data to transform healthcare, say Deloitte officials.

According to Andrew Vaz, principal and chief innovation officer at Deloitte, the move will expand Deloitte’s consulting capabilities.

“We’re definitely already in the analytic and strategic space,” Vaz told Healthcare IT News. “This will expand our interest into the asset space, and we’re very excited about that.”

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“As we see the movement away from volume-based payment toward outcomes payment, we appreciate that there is a $700 billion to $850 billion opportunity to reduce waste in healthcare,” Vaz said. “One of the ways to get at healthcare savings will be through the use of data. By acquiring Recombinant, we will be able to accelerate into that ability with sophistication."

Vaz would not say what the acquisition cost Deloitte, but he said one of the reasons Deloitte chose Recombinant was because of its rapid growth. Recombinant has doubled its revenues every year for the last few years, Vaz said.

Adding Recombinant will help Deloitte provide richer consulting services, including those needed for translational medicine, accountable care organizations and data integration in the provider space, according to Vaz.

“Things just got a lot more interesting and much more powerful for us at Deloitte,” he said.

Recombinant’s ascendency has been driven by opportunities in the health provider, medical research, life sciences and government health markets as they relate to enterprise data integration, population health analytics, clinical genome data assimilation and performance management for ACOs, according to Deloitte.

Recombinant has enjoyed significant year-over-year growth since it was founded in 2005, defying the economic downturn by emphasizing innovation in helping the healthcare industry anticipate a shifting landscape. Recombinant’s business will reside within Deloitte Consulting Innovation under the name Recombinant by Deloitte, officials announced.

[See also: Deloitte: IT essential investment for medical home.]

According to Peter Emerson, chief executive officer of Recombinant, the merger with Deloitte “multiplies in one event our ability to serve clients while opening new opportunities to deliver our products and services more broadly across the marketplace.” 

“This will allow us to make a greater impact on clients and the direction of healthcare," he added. "Deloitte and Recombinant share the same vision on how the industry is changing, and our combination provides a level of scale that can help reshape the clinical informatics industry.”