Portico Buy Expands Mission

HDM Breaking News, October 30, 2008

Looking to support the medical home concept of primary care, payer software vendor Portico Systems Inc. has acquired Ethidium Health Systems for an undisclosed price.

Blue Bell, Pa.-based Portico's core focus has been offering software to insurers to manage their provider networks. The software supports contracting, recruiting, credentialing, relationship management, provider self-service and provider directories.

Huntington Valley, Pa.-based Ethidium sells electronic health records and personal health records software for physicians. It has a small base of customers. The company also sells secure messaging software and a health information exchange platform, services which will become the focus of Portico's new strategy, says Ned Moore, CEO of Portico.

Portico will continue to support Ethidium's existing EHR and PHR customers, but will not further develop the applications. The company views the messaging and HIE software as ways to aggregate and transmit patient data to support the continuum of care among a patient's various physicians. It will market Ethidium's technology as clinical evaluation tools.

The aggregation and messaging software, integrated with Portico's provider management system, also can support pay-for-performance and other incentive programs, Moore says. "We've become the traffic cop of that information because we have the demographic and contracting data," he notes.

More information is available at porticosys.com and ethidium.com.

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