Doctors and nurses use multiple screens at Visicu workstations to monitor patients in real time. Source: Visicu

Royal Philips Electronics has entered into a merger agreement with clinical IT and service provider Visicu, through which Philips is offering to acquire the entire share capital of the company for approximately $300 million (EUR 200 million). 

By integrating Visicu’s remote patient monitoring and clinical decision support technology with Philips' patient monitors, both companies said they expect to accelerate growth by offering products that provide more effective clinical decision support to hospital staff, while allowing them to monitor far greater numbers of critically ill patients.

Steve Rusckowski, CEO of Philips Healthcare said, "[The] deal builds on Philips' announcement two weeks ago that we're acquiring another clinical IT company, Emergin. Philips is a market leader in patient monitoring systems in the hospital, so we know the challenges our customers face – rising patient numbers, staff shortages and concerns about patient safety. By investing in clinical IT solutions like those offered by Visicu and Emergin, we believe we can offer customers more attractive patient monitoring solutions that improve hospital productivity as well as patient outcomes. So making these investments we believe will drive further growth in our patient monitoring business."

The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008 and upon completion of the acquisition, Philips said it intends to capitalize on its extensive sales channel network to accelerate Visicu’s adoption by ICUs at hospitals in the United States, while internationalizing Visicu’s activities and migrating its technologies into other departments within hospitals.

The merger closing is subject to the terms and conditions of the merger agreement, the approval of Visicu’s shareholders, and customary regulatory clearance. The board of directors of the Baltimore-based Visicu has approved the transaction and has recommended that company shareholders vote in favor of the merger.