Healthcare providers' IT spending will increase to $2.9 billion during the year in the Middle East and North Africa, or Mena and Gartner predicts the rising trend will continue.
The Gartner’s forecast includes spending by healthcare providers — hospitals and physicians' practices — on internal services, software, IT services, data center, devices & telecom services. Telecom services, which include fixed and mobile telecom services, will remain the largest overall spending category throughout the forecast period within the healthcare providers sector with an expected market size of $1.2 billion in 2015.
“Various countries across the regions are in different stages in their healthcare technology adoption curve. UAE is expanding focus on achieving coordination across various healthcare stakeholders and in generating efficiency in delivering care, while keeping patient care at the center,” Dr Anurag Gupta, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement.

Molina Healthcare, Inc. (MOH) and HealthPlus of Michigan, Inc. jointly announced today that Molina Healthcare of Michigan, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Molina Healthcare, Inc., has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire certain assets of the Medicaid and MIChild businesses of HealthPlus of Michigan and its subsidiary, HealthPlus Partners, Inc.
As a part of the transaction, Molina Healthcare of Michigan will assume HealthPlus Partners’ Medicaid contract and HealthPlus of Michigan’s MIChild contract, as well as certain provider agreements. HealthPlus Partners and HealthPlus of Michigan currently arrange for healthcare services for approximately 90,000 Medicaid and 6,000 MIChild patients.
“Medicaid has been a significant growth product for HealthPlus in recent years, especially with the Healthy Michigan expansion,” said Nancy Jenkins, president and CEO of HealthPlus of Michigan. “However, this strategic move will provide us the needed capital to maintain the HealthPlus brand as well as to strengthen and grow our Medicare and commercial lines of business. A key factor in our decision to enter into a transaction for our Medicaid and MIChild business with Molina Healthcare was Molina’s shared dedication to providing members with unparalleled customer service and high quality care through innovative care models.”
“Molina Healthcare of Michigan is excited about this opportunity to expand our health plan in the State of Michigan,” said Stephen Harris, president of Molina Healthcare of Michigan. “This agreement with HealthPlus further reinforces our commitment to the Medicaid and MIChild programs, the State and the local provider community. We look forward to a smooth transition and delivering on our commitment to provide quality care for our members.”
Molina Healthcare will fund the transaction with available cash on hand. Subject to regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other closing conditions, the closing of the transaction is expected to occur during the third quarter of 2015.

Community Health Network is making a major investment in Indianapolis with two new large building projects totaling more than a quarter of a billion dollars. The first will include a $175 million development with a new hospital on the campus of Community Hospital East and a new $60 million cancer center at Community Hospital North. Both projects will break ground this year.
"As healthcare continues to evolve, Community Health Network will strive to provide access to quality care with an emphasis on the overall patient experience," said Bryan Mills, president and CEO of Community Health Network. "At Community Hospital East, we realized building a new hospital for the future was, in the end, a better avenue than renovating antiquated buildings meant for a different time in our history. At Community Hospital North, increases in patient volume dictated the need for a new cancer center. Our commitment to Indianapolis remains strong."
The Community Hospital East project changes in scope from the original plan announced last fall. That plan called for major renovation of the decades-old hospital. The redesigned plan calls for the construction of an entirely new hospital, which will take Community East into the future for many years to come. The project includes demolishing four buildings on the campus, building the new hospital tower housing inpatient and procedural rooms and moving its Family Medicine Center from 10th and Mithoeffer to the campus at 1500 N. Ritter. In 2016, a new emergency department, to be located at the back of the hospital, will be built. The redevelopment project is expected to be completed two years sooner than the original plan-and with virtually no disruption to patient care.
"We believe construction of a new hospital will bring dramatic, positive change to the east side," said Mills. "The new campus will provide the space our East employees need to deliver innovative healthcare in the most efficient manner. Community Hospital East will become a new modern structure that will be a pillar for the east side of Indianapolis."
Community Health Network will be expanding oncology services with the new cancer center on the campus of Community Hospital North. The $60 million, three-story, 104,000 square foot facility will be built south of Community Heart and Vascular Hospital along Shadeland Avenue. It will also be connected to Community Hospital North.
The new cancer center will keep the facility name, Community Cancer Center North, and was designed with input from patients, physicians and staff. It will feature elements that create a home-like atmosphere. Patients will control their surroundings, including room temperature, lighting, entertainment, food choices, and privacy. The cancer center will also feature wellness facilities, quiet workspaces, public Wi-Fi, a knowledge center, and a nature garden.
"At Community, we understand that cancer is a life-changing experience for patients and their families," said Jianan Graybill, M.D., radiation oncologist and lead physician on the project. "Our new center was designed to allow them to carry on much of their usual routine and activities as possible while undergoing treatments. They may use the workspaces to conduct business or use Skype to keep distant family members updated."
The Community Hospital East project will break ground in July, followed by an early fall groundbreaking for the cancer center at Community Hospital North.

Human Longevity, Inc. and Cleveland Clinic today announced a broad collaboration agreement to first sequence and analyze blood samples from Cleveland Clinic’s GeneBank study of de-identified patients.
The two organizations will apply whole genome, cancer and microbiome sequencing focusing on a subset of samples with the goal of discovering novel disease genes and disease pathways associated with heart disease.
“Cleveland Clinic is one of the premier clinical health care settings in the world and we are excited to be working with Dr. Cosgrove and his team. Using HLI’s powerful genomic technologies and analysis tools to better understand the biological basis for disease should enable earlier intervention and better treatments,” said J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., CEO of HLI.
“In medicine we are constantly exploring opportunities to better understand how diseases develop and what we can do to either prevent or provide the most impactful and effective course of treatment,” said Toby Cosgrove, M.D., President and CEO of Cleveland Clinic. “We are thrilled to be advancing the correlation of genomic data with clinical care.”
HLI is currently sequencing and analyzing thousands of whole genomes per month. The company is integrating this whole genome sequence data with extensive and unique clinical measures and imaging within the HLI Knowledgebase™. The combined high quality, comprehensive data will continue to enrich the HLI Knowledgebase™, which includes the company’s proprietary informatics analysis and data interpretation and integration. The company is pursuing agreements with a variety of customers including pharmaceutical and biotech companies, academic health systems, governments and insurers.

UDG Healthcare Plc reported a 19 percent rise in adjusted operating profit and raised its full-year earnings forecast.
The company, which provides outsourced sales and marketing, drug distribution and packaging services to healthcare firms, said it expects adjusted earnings per share (EPS) growth of 7 percent to 9 percent at constant currency.
UDG Healthcare had earlier forecast growth of 5 percent to 8 percent for the year to Sept. 30, 2015.
Adjusted operating profit rose to 53.6 million euros ($60.9 million) for the six months ended March 31 from 45.0 million euros a year earlier.
Revenue rose 9 percent to 1.13 billion euros.

Healthcare Access San Antonio, the Health Information Exchange for Bexar and 21 surrounding counties in South Central Texas, is in talks with the North Texas Accountable Healthcare Partnership and could merge with the Dallas-based HIE.
There are several such exchanges in the Lone Star State in various stages of development. Last July, Healthcare Access San Antonio, or HASA, became the first HIE in Texas to achieve full accreditation, so the nonprofit collaborative has a head start on a number of other exchanges.
“The way we are looking at this is as a natural evolution,” said HASA Executive Director Gijs van Oort. “There are economic benefits to this.”
The HIE’s are designed to move medical data electronically between health care providers, systems and insurers. The data exchange allows providers to better manage their patients’ care. It also gives patients better access to their own health information.
“We are exploring connecting our resources and technologies,” said van Oort about talks with the Dallas HIE. “This is still in the discussion stage.”
Van Oort said the two groups will likely decide by summer whether to pursue a merger. If they do, he said the two HIE’s would maintain their current leadership and governance.

Singapores Raffles Medical Group will develop a general hospital in Shanghai as part of a joint-venture – its first hospital outside of Singapore, it announced on Wednesday (May 13).
The 400-bed hospital will be built in Shanghai's Pudong New Area, and will cater to locals, expatriates as well as international patients. This is the result of a joint collaboration between Raffles Medical Group and the Shanghai LuJiaZui Group.
A signing ceremony was held on Wednesday at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore to mark the beginning of the project, in the presence of Shanghai Mayor Mr Yang Xiong and Singapore’s Minister for Trade and Industry Mr Lim Hng Kiang.
Raffles Medical Group said in a statement the new Shanghai hospital will be designed to offer a full complement of specialist services including obstetrics and gynaecology, cardiology, oncology and orthopaedics.
It added that the general hospital's location, at the New Bund International Business District of the Pudong New Area, is an emerging business centre in Pudong that has been designated by the Shanghai municipal government as one of six priority development areas in Shanghai’s 12th Five-Year Plan.

Axa PPP Healthcare is to acquire Simplyhealth’s private medical insurance (PMI) business, subject to approval by the appropriate authorities.
The sale by Simplyhealth follows a strategic review of the organisation’s activities, informed by an 18-month analysis of the marketplace and an insight project involving interviews with 5,000 people and 250 organisations.
As a result, it plans to grow its health cash plan and Denplan offerings for its employer clients.
Under the agreement, nearly all of Simplyhealth’s 390 Bristol-based employees, as well as a small number of employees based in other locations in the UK, will transfer to Axa PPP Healthcare under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Tupe) regulations, The PMI business will continue to operate from Simplyhealth’s Bristol offices, which Axa will acquire.
Simplyhealth’s employer clients will transition over to Axa PPP Healthcare.
Romana Abdin, chief executive of Simplyhealth, said: “We are going to focus on everyday healthcare, where we see numerous growth opportunities in services to address the everyday things that stop our customers from making the most of life.
“Problems like back pain, toothache, eyesight difficulty, mobility and independence. This is where demand is rising inexorably.  The sale of our PMI business will provide us with funds to accelerate this strategy.”
Keith Gibbs, chief executive of Axa PPP Healthcare, added: “With its well-balanced, stable book of business, Simplyhealth’s PMI business will be an excellent addition to Axa PPP Healthcare, and this agreement has presented a rare opportunity to acquire a complementary business in the UK.
“Both organisations share a commitment to offering outstanding customer service, supporting their local communities and being an employer of choice.
“We look forward to working with Simplyhealth and its intermediary partners to ensure a smooth transition, providing excellent service and continuing cover for all individual and business customers.”

Life Healthcare Group Holdings Ltd., the private hospital operator with beds in India and Poland, will make more acquisitions in those countries within six months as costs in its home market of South Africa rise.
There are deals “that we are currently working on in both Poland and India which we are hoping to complete in the second half,” Chief Executive Officer Andre Meyer said in a webcast presentation on Wednesday. Extra beds in India will be funded from existing resources and local cash flow, he said.
Life Healthcare owns 46 percent of India’s Max Healthcare Ltd., the 294-bed Scanmed Group in Poland and in February sold a stake in Durban, South Africa-based Joint Medical Holdings Ltd. The Johannesburg-based company is facing pressure on profit margins in its home market due to a weakening rand and labor costs, Meyer said, adding that the hospital operator is focused on maintaining that margin.
Earnings per share excluding one-time items fell 2.9 percent to 80.3 cents in the six months through March after the disposal of the Joint Medical Holdings stake, the company said in a statement. Revenue gained 14 percent to 7.09 billion rand ($591 million), while the dividend was raised 7.9 percent to 68 cents a share.
The shares fell as much as 5.3 percent, the most since Jan. 29 last year, and traded 2.9 percent lower at 38.49 rand as of 12:03 p.m. in Johannesburg. The stock has declined 10 percent this year, valuing the company at 40 billion rand.

FUJIFILM Corporation has announced that it completed the acquisition, through the U.S. sales subsidiary FUJIFILM Medical Systems U.S.A., Inc., of the U.S. medical IT software company TeraMedica, Inc.
TeraMedica offers archive solutions for managing and storing a range of digitized in-hospital clinical information images of Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS).
In recent years, clinical departments at hospitals have used their own independent applications for managing a range of clinical information, including diagnostic information taken with CT, MRI, etc., and movie image files captured during endoscopic examination, surgery, etc.
There has been a rising demand to have a centralized system for such clinical information to be viewable for each patient in unified manner.
There is also a need for a system that centrally manages clinical information of multiple hospitals, manages and stores such information and administers the data under unified rules to build an effective regional health information network.
In response to these needs, the archive system known as "Vendor Neutral Archive" (hereafter "VNA")" is attracting attention and spreading mainly in Europe and the U.S.
This is a system that can manage a comprehensive range of clinical information in an integrated manner, including diagnostic images stored in various vendors' PACS and in each system to the clinical departments.
TeraMedica, was established in 2001 and developed VNA with the cooperation of the Mayo Clinic, one of the best hospital is the U.S. using some of the top medical systems in the world.
The company began marketing VNA in the U.S. in 2003, and has since led the market. For its outstanding system design and expandability, TeraMedica's VNA earned "2014 Best in KLAS awards" approximately 200 hospitals in the U.S., including the Mayo Clinic and over 300 medical institutes around the globe.
Fujifilm has been promoting the introduction of VNA since 2013, when it signed a distribution partnership with TeraMedica in the U.S. By acquiring the company, Fujifilm plans to accelerate the introduction of VNA, which is capable of centrally managing a wide range of digitized in-hospital clinical information.
One of Fujifilm's primary goals is to build a system that can facilitate the coordination of clinical information between hospitals.
This is the company's bid in further promoting regional medical cooperation.
Fujifilm's medical information systems business is built around the "SYNAPSE" PACS, and offers a wide range of non-radiology information systems, including the cardiovascular imaging system "SYNAPSE CardioVascular," the endoscopy and ultrasound information management system "NEXUS," and biological information system "Prescient."
Fujifilm will combine TeraMedica's VNA with its array of information systems to offer solutions that contribute to medical diagnosis at a greater efficiency than ever before, while actively promoting its global deployment.
Fujifilm will continue to develop and provide a wide range of products and services that promote the use of massive clinical information, and to address various needs of healthcare workers on the medical frontline.
This is part of the company's effort to streamline medical diagnosis, improve the quality of medical care, and help maintain and promote public health.