Philips Philandering

Netherlands-based Philips has made 3 acquisitions this month:

1. Emergin - a Boca Raton-based maker of wireless alarms for hospitals, doing about $20M in annual revenue; probably petty cash for Philips... 2. Visicu - a Baltimore-based provider of patient monitoring systems, a deal worth about $430M, maybe requiring two signatures on the check... 3. Respironics - a 5.1 Billion dollar deal for this respiratory-support system vendor, enough to distract even Bill Gates from giving our money away... What's up? The weakened dollar (buy any French wine lately?) Â makes US firms very attractive to foreign investors, with the Euro now worth almost double its value of a few years ago. Philips has dabbled in the US IT market before, when it tried to do a deal with Judy Faulkner's cult and re-brand EpiCare as Xtensis for small to mid-size hospitals. That deal went nowhere, so I guess now Philips has now decided to buy, rather than "partner" with US firms. Future prognosis? I wish someone in Philips or another giant multi-national would wake up and smell the Quadramed roses. Affinity is an excellent core HIS with 200 happy clients, adding Misys' Patient One (the old UltiCare) gives it an excellent EMR/CPOE front-end, and their stock price is so low they're buying it back themselves... Anyone know how to say "wake up" in Dutch? Â