Cerner Corp. last week announced plans to acquire Galt Associates Inc., a provider of safety and risk management solutions for pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology companies. Cerner’s goal through the acquisition is to build its LifeSciences portfolio with new systems and services that use medical event data to monitor and manage the safety and efficacy of various therapies.

Cerner’s LifeSciences division serves the growing market need for software, data and services to help drug development companies bring safe products to market. Cerner developed its Health Facts, a data warehouse of more than 35 million clinical encounters, to aggregate confidential data to help foster relationships between pharmaceutical therapies and resulting clinical outcomes.

Galt can take this data one step further, Cerner said, by helping users code, exchange and analyze adverse medical event data to more effectively comply with regulations. In addition to monitoring the safety of existing products, Galt works with clients to improve the development process for new products and measure the relative safety and efficacy profiles of competing products.

The acquisition is expected to be completed in Q3.