Siemens Healthcare announced Friday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Yardley, Pa.-based MobileMD, Inc., a developer of health information exchange technology.

Officials said that the deal, terms of which were not disclosed, will close as soon as is practicable.

MobileMD’s cloud-deployed HIE service liberates patient information across a community of providers, regardless of geographic, organizational, or health IT system boundaries. The HIE solution is in use by more than 110 hospitals and more than 2,000 physician practices. By allowing physician practices to maintain their preferred ambulatory health IT solution, hospitals connect even more doctors with valuable patient data, such as laboratory results, imaging results and discharge notes.

[See also: Siemens turns focus to small community hospitals.]

Officials say MobileMD’s focus on driving connectivity within an entire community, and its efforts to deliver more coordinated patient care across settings, will be crucial to driving accountable care initiatives.

“The goals behind many of our country’s broad, health reform initiatives are intended to improve the quality of care by doing two basic things: increase utilization of electronic technology, for a variety of benefits, and improve the coordination of care among entities that had previously not shared data well,” said John Glaser, PhD, CEO, Siemens Healthcare, Health Services Business Unit.

“Patients come into the healthcare system expecting physicians to help them get well by coordinating their care," he added. "Patients generally should not need to be concerned with the logistics of how their care is coordinated – they should rightfully expect that it will be coordinated. Siemens was impressed with MobileMD’s capabilities to enable this level of data sharing while maintaining an impressive focus on customer satisfaction. MobileMD customers can expect to continue to experience this same level, or an improved level, of service, commitment and partnership.”

[See also: Connecticut health network begins HIE work.]

MobileMD has been active in the health information exchange space since 2005. The company markets the cloud-based 4D HIE, which addresses information sharing in four dimensions: care, service, economics and technology – providing physicians with near real-time, secure, clinical and administrative information regardless of location, affiliation, EMR technology or vendor, officials say.

"Connecting with our physician community is probably the single most important step needed to begin our journey toward providing accountable care and MobileMD fills that need," said Tom Pacek, CIO of South Jersey Healthcare. "With MobileMD and Siemens we can deploy cost-effective, standards-based technology to make information available in a timely manner for our community physicians. This becomes a tremendous value-add for South Jersey Healthcare. The fact that Siemens is a leader on the provider side of the healthcare business helps assure me that MobileMD will be able to maintain its focus on delivering what I need as a healthcare provider.”

MobileMD officials tout the company's expertise in addressing the technical, legal and business complexities of connecting health systems, hospitals and physician communities in the United States healthcare market.

“While hospitals remain a focal point of care in the community, we see a paradigm shift whereby care is increasingly coordinated and delivered throughout the entire community at myriad locations and care settings," said MobileMD's Vice President Todd Fisher. "Patients are treated along a continuum, not at discrete locations. For patients, each event, each encounter with a provider impacts past and future care delivery. Improving clinical data access and information flow are therefore critical components necessary to facilitate a successful paradigm shift."