Siemens Healthcare has agreed to sell its hospital information system business to U.S.-based Cerner for 963 million euros ($1.3 billion).
The business being sold specializes in administrative hospital IT and electronic patient records and is not part of the IT segment that deals with imaging modalities and laboratory equipment. It has headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania, U.S., and employs some 6,000 employees worldwide with operations in the U.S, Europe, and Asia.
The companies said the transaction could close in the first quarter of 2015, pending regulatory approvals.
In a prepared statement, Hermann Requardt, Siemens Healthcare CEO, said that after continuously investing in the hospital information system portfolio and achieving "significant progress on the technology side," the company "realized that business success of our hospital information systems could not always keep pace with our competition."
"Additionally," he said, "an increasing number of country-specific requirements, such as resulting from U.S. healthcare reform, make it increasingly challenging to achieve sufficient scale effects."
Going forward, Requardt said Siemens will focus on the development of information systems that support its businesses in laboratory diagnostics, imaging, and therapy.
