UPMC says it will take a majority interest in New York-based medCPU, become a customer of the company and also will co-develop new products to take to market.

UPMC Enterprises, the commercialization arm of UPMC, has offered to purchase stock from existing non-employee medCPU shareholders, and executives expects UPMC will hold majority ownership in the privately held company when the offer is completed.

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Also, planned for the second quarter of this year, UPMC will lead an investment round of $35 million in new capital to accelerate expansion of medCPU. Existing medCPU shareholder Merck Global Health Innovation Fund is also participating in this round.

“Our partnership with medCPU will provide UPMC with technology and solutions that will be immediately valuable to our clinicians and patients,” said Tal Heppenstall, president of UPMC Enterprises. Longer term, he added, the technology would enable the development of other data-dependent applications in areas such as care management, population health and consumer engagement.

The customer and co-developer model is one that UPMC has also employed with data analytics company Health Catalyst.

MedCPU counts more than 60 hospital facilities among its clients. It will open a Pittsburgh office, hire more than 20 engineers and other staff to work with UPMC to co-develop additional products and to improve existing solutions. MedCPU’s technology addresses the healthcare IT challenges of interoperability, capturing all relevant patient data, and understanding free text, dictation and structured data from EHRs and ancillary systems, MedCPU CEO and co-founder and former helicopter pilot Eyal Ephrat, MD, said.

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