UPMC Becomes Majority Partner, Investor in medCPU’s Real-Time Decision Support Solutions

Pittsburgh-based integrated health system UPMC announced it will become a majority partner and investor in New York City-based health IT vendor medCPU and will also become a customer of medCPU’s real-time clinical decision support solutions.

As part of the strategic partnership, UPMC will work with medCPU to co-develop additional products with the goal of improving patient outcomes, according to an announcement from UPMC.

UPMC will lead an investment round of $35 million in new capital to accelerate expansion of medCPU and has commenced a tender offer to purchase stock from existing non-employee medCPU shareholders and expects to hold majority ownership in the company when the offer is completed in the second quarter of this year.

medCPU develops and markets medCPU Advisor, a decision support solution that captures relevant patient information including free text, dictation, and structured data from electronic medical records (EMRs) and ancillary systems, in real-time, to enable the delivery of actionable insights at the point of care. The company currently serves more than 60 hospitals. As a result of the investment, medCPU will open an office in Pittsburgh and will hire more than 20 engineers to work with UPMC to co-develop new products and enhance existing solutions.

“Our partnership with medCPU will provide UPMC with technology and solutions that will be immediately valuable to our clinicians and patients. Longer term, this powerful technology will enable the development of other data-dependent applications in such critical areas as care management, population health and consumer engagement,” Tal Heppenstall, president of UPMC Enterprises, said in a statement. UPMC Enterprises is the commercialization arm of UPMC which led the investment.

According to UPMC, the technology overcomes many of the obstacles that currently make it difficult to aggregate and normalize information across siloed data systems. “medCPU’s solution makes it possible to combine rich, highly accurate information with extensive clinical best-practice content and services – resulting in reduced ‘alert fatigue’ and improved response rates, thus avoiding clinical errors and reducing costs,” UPMC said in a statement.

Sonia Ben-Yehuda, president and co-founder of medCPU, said, “Having access to the clinical, technological and operational expertise of one of the country’s leading integrated health care providers and insurance systems will enable medCPU to rapidly expand our current capabilities and leverage our technology to greatly impact an industry that is moving quickly to value-based care.”