Sheffield technology firm Servelec announced today the acquisition of Salford-based Aura Limited, which specialises in the UK, Ireland and international healthcare markets.
Aura is a developer of software for the healthcare sector that controls bed management and patient flow across hospitals, clinics and primary care centres, enabling improved care of patients.
The company’s software range of products will continue to be sold on a standalone basis as well as being integrated into Servelec’s Oceano and RiO products thereby adding to their functionality.
This acquisition is part of Servelec’s continued growth within its Health & Social Care division.
The deal comes around six months after Servelec acquired London firm Corelogic, which is a provider of adult and children’s social care case management software, for £23.5m.
The Sheffield company’s latest purchase comprised of £900k worth of debts of Aura, which amounts to £1.1m and a further £1 for Aura’s entire issued and to-be-issued share capital.
An additional maximum amount of £350k will become payable, contingent on the attainment of certain performance conditions over a 3-year period ending April 2018, which will be satisfied by the issue of new shares at the prevailing share price at the time of issue. The initial consideration will be paid from internal cash reserves.
For the year ended 31 March 2015, Aura’s unaudited reported loss before tax was £1.5m on a turnover of £1.1m and gross assets of £600k. Aura’s directors have already taken action to reduce the cost base from £2.6m to less than £1m per annum as at April 2015 and have a strong pipeline of potential revenue. The acquisition is expected to be earnings neutral in 2015 and enhancing thereafter.
Aura’s main product, ‘Flow’, is an intuitive and functionally-rich bed management solution. Its core functionality aims to help the patient’s journey, ensuring timely responses and improved quality of care. In turn, this drives bed management and provides real time indicators of current "bed-state" across an organisation, replacing traditional handwritten whiteboards. Flow is designed for use with large touch screen displays yet it will operate on any device connected to the organization’s network, including desktop PCs and tablets.
Alan Stubbs, CEO of Servelec Group said: "I am very pleased to be able to announce the acquisition of Aura.  We have a clear direction of travel which is to be successful in the ‘Refresh’ in the North of England and this Acquisition increases the appeal of our Oceano product and adds further functionality to RiO, our market leading Mental Health and Community Health system.
“The quality of Aura’s technology is second to none. ‘Flow’ is already integrated into Oceano and RiO and with Aura’s established routes to market together with our leading market position, we are really excited by the additional growth opportunities Aura offers."

Evolent Health, a provider of software solutions for health care providers, on Monday filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company said it was seeking to raise $100 million, but that is likely a placeholder for its initial S-1 filing and plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol EVH.
In 2013, Evolent Health raised $100 million in a capital raising initiative to bring its capital base to $124 million. It was the second round of funding, for the company, according to Venture Beat. TPG Growth participated in that fundraising round, as well as stakeholders UPMC Health Plans, the health care provider associated with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Advisory Board (ABCO), a Washington-based provider of management and consulting services that focuses on health care. Evolent CEO Frank Williams serves as co-chair of Advisory Board, in addition to his leadership of Evolent.
Evolent partners with leading health systems to drive value-based care transformation, according to TPG Growth's description of its portfolio company. It operates on what is called a "value-based care model" by the healthcare sector that focuses on the value of care being provided over the volume.
"In an environment of rising costs and wide variations in care quality, creating clinical value is challenging but critically important — and readily achievable with the right partner," Williams said in a 2013 statement announcing the recapitalization. "With our physician and provider partners, Evolent is able to fully align with the clinical and financial imperatives of the health care system. With this investment, we can extend our reach to serve even more systems in more markets."

IBM is furthering the expansion of its Watson data-analytics technology into health care through partnerships around human gene analysis and cancer treatment.
International Business Machines Corp. is working with 14 cancer institutes, including Yale Cancer Center, to use Watson to identify cancer-causing mutations and help tailor treatments. IBM also said Tuesday that it is teaming up with software maker Epic Systems Corp. and the Mayo Clinic to analyze patients’ electronic health-care records.
IBM is increasing sales of data analytics and cloud-computing products as demand for older hardware and services declines. Lately, the company has bolstered its health care offerings, creating a business unit called Watson Health Cloud to store and analyze anonymous patient data.
“It’s really a market-led initiative,” Stephen Gold, vice president of marketing for IBM Watson, said in an interview. “Certainly IBM recognizes the sea change that is occurring in health care.”
Technology has facilitated the gathering of patient health data, though the information is often spread across different electronic records systems. Meanwhile, results of clinical trials and research on illnesses are also fragmented.
These circumstances make it difficult to leverage all of the electronic information to glean insights to assist in patient care. IBM is pitching its Watson tool, which ingests and analyzes troves of data to derive patterns and insights, as the technology to help bring this disparate information together.
The 14 cancer centers are already piloting IBM’s technology to analyze patient’s DNA, which can be more than 100 gigabytes of data, to look for variations to illuminate for physicians. The partner institutions are currently using Watson at no cost, Gold said.
In the second tie-up, Mayo Clinic doctors will be able to analyze cancer patients’ health records via Epic, a maker of software for medical groups and hospitals, to help match them with clinical trials.
Still, for these technologies to be used widely, Armonk, New York-based IBM and its partners will have to convince physicians to use them in their everyday routines.
“This is all physician-directed,” Gold said. “The physician becomes the catalyst, if you will, to activate and utilize the outcome.”

HealthSouth Corporation announced it has finalized the previously announced acquisition of Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky.
Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital, comprised of 158 licensed inpatient rehabilitation beds and 74 licensed skilled nursing beds, will continue to provide high-quality inpatient rehabilitation, skilled nursing, outpatient rehabilitation and home health services. The hospital will remain in the current location at 2050 Versailles Road in Lexington, Kentucky.
"HealthSouth is excited to be serving residents of central and eastern Kentucky at Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital," said HealthSouth Regional President Barbara Jacobsmeyer. "The hospital has a wonderful reputation of providing exceptional care since 1950, and HealthSouth plans to continue fulfilling the hospital's mission of giving hope and enhancing outcomes for patients and families."
Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital joins HealthSouth's national network of 108 inpatient rehabilitation hospitals and is the third hospital in Kentucky joining HealthSouth Northern Kentucky Rehabilitation Hospital in Edgewood and HealthSouth Lakeview Rehabilitation Hospital in Elizabethtown.

Patterson Companies Inc. said Monday that it will pay roughly $1.1 billion in cash for Animal Health International in a deal that will double Patterson’s veterinary business and give it extra heft in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.
With Animal Health, the Mendota-based Patterson will gain an animal product distribution company with about $1.5 billion in sales and $68 million in annual profits. Animal Health sells products for pets, horses, beef and dairy cattle, poultry and pigs. It works with more than 1,000 manufacturers.
The deal, expected to close during Patterson’s first fiscal quarter, will be financed via a loan and a separate revolving line of credit.
Patterson, which has about $4.3 billion in annual revenue, plans to divest its $468 million medical/therapy equipment business in an effort to pay for the acquisition. It has hired Bank of America Merrill Lynch to explore the alternatives. If sold, proceeds will help pay down the debt for the new Animal Health purchase, officials said.
Patterson’s medical business produces about $64 million a year in profits, but is “not a core part of the company’s long-term strategy,” officials said in a statement.
Patterson plans to focus on the dental and veterinary supply business. It is the latest in a multiyear turnaround plan designed to boost growth and profits.
News of the Animal Health purchase comes six months after Patterson announced that it would buy Holt Dental Supply Inc. in Waukesha, Wis. In 2013, it also bought a British veterinary supplier named National Veterinary Services Ltd. that doubled Patterson’s veterinary business. That addition has since enjoyed significant profit gains, the company said.
Liking such results, Patterson is doubling its veterinary segment once again. With Animal Health, Patterson expects to save $20 million to $30 million over three years as duplicative expenses are cut.
“This is a transformational move for Patterson Companies,” CEO Scott P. Anderson told analysts during a conference call Monday.
“Acquiring Animal Health International firmly establishes Patterson in the production animal health market, in addition to building on our already strong presence in the companion pet market,” he said. “This acquisition is a key part of our previously disclosed strategic intent to take a broadened view of our markets and position our businesses to generate profitable growth and increase shareholder value.”
Not all investors were convinced. The stock on Monday fell 72 cents, or 1.5 percent, to close at $46.36 a share. Since November, the once-troubled stock has been trading at levels not seen since 2005.

EOS imaging, the pioneer in 2D/3D orthopedic medical imaging, today announced that another of the leading U.S. hospitals for pediatric orthopedics has endorsed EOS imaging technology for its superiority in radiation dose reduction and diagnosis information for orthopedic pediatric imaging.
The Boston based, top-ranked hospital in the U.S. for pediatric orthopedics is installing an EOS imaging system, marking the second installation in the city.
Meanwhile, findings from third-ranked Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego demonstrated a 50-fold dose reduction in radiation exposure for scoliosis patients imaged using EOS Microdose feature. The data were presented by Dr. Peter Newton, chief of the division of Orthopedics & Scoliosis at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego during the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA) Annual Meeting, held in Atlanta Apr 30- May 2.
Marie Meynadier, CEO of EOS imaging, said, “the installation of EOS in the highest ranking pediatric hospital for orthopedics in the US marks the 13th of the top 20 children’s hospitals in the US to adopt EOS low dose 2D/3D imaging. This strong adoption momentum by key institutions, and data such as that presented by Rady Children’s at the POSNA meeting on ultimate dose reduction, are clearly establishing EOS as the gold standard in orthopedic pediatric imaging.”
The EOS® system provides full-body stereo-radiographic images of patients in functional positions, in both 2D and 3D. EOS exams require a radiation dose 50% to 85% less than Digital Radiology and 95% less than basic CT scans, as well as related software solutions.

Indonesia's healthcare agency BPJS Kesehatan under pressure to ease financial burden from delayed premium payments
More than 2 million participants have fallen behind on National Health Insurance (JKN) premium payments, contributing to the programme's financial difficulties last year.
The Healthcare and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan), the insurance operator, reported that 2,158,584 people had been late in their premium payments for three to six months.
Those who are late in their payments are mostly workers who do not receive fixed salaries," BPJS spokesperson Irfan Humaidi told The Jakarta Post recently. "They are people who register when they fall ill, but stop paying once they recover."
There are 1,915,424 participants in this category, while 242,653 long-time members have failed to keep up with premium payments, including those covered by the Jamsostek insurance programme. A further 175 members have become late-payers after retiring from their jobs.
Irfan said that the rate of non-compliant participants had not harmed the agency's finances, since their number accounted for less than two per cent of the current 140 million JKN participants.
Each JKN participant is required to pay premiums of differing sums, starting from Rp 25,500 (US$1.96) per month.
BPJS Kesehatan expects to remain in the red throughout this year, with its claim ratio expected to hover around 100 per cent. The claim ratio is the difference between the hospitals' bills for health services provided and the premiums collected by the agency from participants registered in the programme.
Separately, the National Social Security Board (DJSN), which is tasked with monitoring the programme, said that while the number of late-payers might be relatively small now, BPJS Kesehatan should not ignore these groups of people.
"If non-compliant participants are ignored and there's no punishment, their numbers will swell," DJSN head Chazali Husni Situmorang told the Post.
BPJS Kesehatan should hunt these late-payers, he argued, a simple process since the agency already had their addresses and phone numbers.
"The agency has to have a strategy. For example, the marketing division should call all those who are late in their payments. The agency could also utilize a system to send automated SMS," said Chazali.
Irfan said that the agency had already sent bills via text message.
"Moreover, late-payers receiving treatment at hospitals will receive notification that they haven't paid," he said.
After six months without payment, they are no longer eligible for health treatments, according to Irfan.
The late-payers also have to pay a fine of two per cent of the total premiums before they can resume their membership in the JKN programme.
"The fine is too small. It should be increased incrementally," Chazali said. "If the fine is too small, then its deterrent effect is negligible."
He also suggested that the BPJS Kesehatan require its participants pay premiums once every six months, instead of monthly.
"It would counter late payments. And it doesn't violate the law because the law doesn't stipulate that BPJS Kesehatan must collect premiums every month," said Chazali.
He also suggested that BPJS Kesehatan publish the names of late-payers in local media or government offices to shame them.
Lastly, Chazali said, BPJS Kesehatan could team up with state-owned electricity company PLN and state-owned telecommunications company Telkom to target late-payers.
"When they pay their electricity bills or phone bills, they could be reminded to pay their JKN premiums," he said

Royal London Hospital’s new £78 million dental hospital in Whitechapel to handle 70,000 appointments a year
Princess Anne has been touring the Royal London Hospital’s new £78 million dental hospital and school in Whitechapel today where she met a little girl who used to be scared of dentists.
She gave the new complex her “royal seal of approval” meeting patients as well as dental staff from Barts Health NHS Trust and students from Queen Mary University.
Among the patients was 10-year-old Rosanna Lucas who presented her with a posy of flowers.
Rosanna had four teeth impacted in her jaw bone when she was eight, causing her intense pain, sinus problems and worsening her hearing condition which meant that she was missing lots of school, the Princess Royal heard.
Rosanna’s fear of going to the dentist meant that the procedure was originally going to be carried out under general anaesthetic.
But she was also scared of that too, after her experience having grommets fitted in her ears as a young child.
So hospital specialists carefully explained what was happening and gained her trust.
Rosanna overcame her fear and only needed local anaesthetic which is far safer for children.
“I knew my daughter was scared of the dentist and didn’t want her carrying that fear for life,” Rosanna’s mum Carly Lucas explained. “Going to the dentist is so much easier now—when you get it right as a child, you get it right for life.”
The new dental centre which took a decade of planning and building can handle 70,000 appointments a year.
The move to the five-storey premises, occupying the equivalent of three football pitches, took place over six weeks last year.
Princess Anne unveiled a plaque this-afternoon to mark the opening of Britain’s first new dental school and hospital in nearly 40 years.
She said: “The real changes in technology used today have moved on quite a bit and new buildings like this give the opportunity to see how well it works for everyone. There is a very nice atmosphere here.”
Patients are referred from all over London for orthodontics, paediatric dentistry, restorative dentistry and oral surgery. The centre also provides specialist trauma and cancer services, performing 4,000 operations a year.
But its chore aim is to improve dental health in the deprived East End.
Queen Mary University’s Dean for Dentistry Prof Mike Curtis explained: “Our local communities face some of the most challenging health needs anywhere in the UK and the new hospital has a role to play with our internationally-recognised research.”
Tower Hamlets has high rates of child dental decay, affecting nearly half of all five-year-olds, more than anywhere else across London.
There is low uptake of dental services with has high rates of gum disease and mouth cancer in adults, above the national average.
The Royal London was recently ranked the top dental school in the UK, training 400 students each year.

People on Medicaid turn to hospital care when doctor access is limited, new survey suggests
Emergency-room visits continued to climb in the second year of the Affordable Care Act, contradicting the law’s supporters who had predicted a decline in traffic as more people gained access to doctors and other health-care providers.
A survey of 2,098 emergency-room doctors conducted in March showed about three-quarters said visits had risen since January 2014. That was a significant uptick from a year earlier, when less than half of doctors surveyed reported an increase. The survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians is scheduled to be published Monday.
Medicaid recipients newly insured under the health law are struggling to get appointments or find doctors who will accept their coverage, and consequently wind up in the ER, ACEP said. Volume might also be increasing due to hospital and emergency-department closures—a long-standing trend.
“There was a grand theory the law would reduce ER visits,” said Dr. Howard Mell, a spokesman for ACEP. “Well, guess what, it hasn’t happened. Visits are going up despite the ACA, and in a lot of cases because of it.”
The health law’s impact on emergency departments has been closely watched because it has significant implications for the public. ER crowding has been linked to longer wait times and higher mortality rates.
More than half of providers listed in Medicaid managed-care plans couldn’t schedule appointments for enrollees, according to a December report by the Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General. Among providers who could offer appointments, the median wait time was two weeks, but more than a quarter of doctors had wait times of more than a month for an appointment.
Many doctors don’t accept Medicaid patients because the state-federal coverage provides lower reimbursement rates than many private health-insurance plans. The waits for primary and specialty care by participating doctors appear to be leaving some Medicaid patients with the ER as the only option, according to ACEP.
“We’re seeing a huge backlog in the ER because the volume has increased,” said Ryan Stanton, an emergency-room doctor at Baptist Health Lexington in Kentucky. “This year we already have had to board people in the ER because of the sheer volumes,” he said, referring to a practice of keeping patients in the ER until a hospital room becomes available.
Dr. Stanton said ER volume rose about 10% in 2014 from 2013, and was up almost 20% in the first few months of this year.
The ACEP survey also found that ERs are seeing sicker patients: About 90% of the doctors polled said the severity of illness has stayed the same or gotten worse. That might be explained in part by an aging population, newly insured people with multiple maladies, and people delaying care because they have high-deductible insurance plans.
Nicholas Vasquez, a medical director for an emergency department in Mesa, Ariz., said volume rose 5% in a year, representing about 10 more patients a day. The stress from bigger caseloads prompted some nurses to resign, he said. “Physicians are working more shifts—that pushes them a lot,” Dr. Vasquez said. “If they work too much, they get burnt out. For patients, it means longer waits.”
Some states have been trying to curb ER use by Medicaid recipients by requiring higher copayments for visits deemed nonurgent. Critics have denounced that practice as punitive, and warn that it will dissuade low-income patients from seeking care that may be necessary.
A 2013 study by Truven Health Analytics that examined insurance claims for more than 6.5 million ER visits by commercially insured people under age 65 found just 29% of patients required immediate attention. Twenty-four percent didn’t require immediate attention, 41% received care that could have been provided in a primary-care setting, and 6% got care that would have been preventable or avoidable with proper primary care.
More than 40% of emergency physicians said they expect emergency-room visits to increase if the Supreme Court rules that subsidies provided to people who obtain insurance on the federal exchange are invalid. The court is expected to rule by late June.

NetScientific, the biomedical and healthcare technology group, has formed a new digital health sales and marketing subsidiary company, Triventis Health LLC (“Triventis”) in partnership with iMPak Health, LLC (“iMPak”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Meridian Health Hospital Group, New Jersey, USA.
Triventis will provide smart digital healthcare solutions, enabling better patient data collection, connectivity and software to give healthcare providers actionable clinical data.
The new company will have its own sales force to sell and market the integrated solutions provided by a combination of Wanda Health’s (a NetScientific subsidiary) cloud-based information analytics and iMPak’s healthcare expertise and innovative easy-to-use medical devices, to intelligently monitor and manage patients.
This unique healthcare management product has undergone trial and will be adopted by the Meridian Hospital Group – which consists of six hospitals, 100 facility locations and generates US$1.6 billion in revenue. The product will then roll out across the USA to other healthcare providers.
The initial product provides continuous monitoring and assessment of patients with Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). Triventis will distribute other Wanda Health applications, notably for patients with co-morbidities and iMPak’s next generation medication management to help improve compliance with prescription schedules.
Sir Richard Sykes, Chairman of NetScientific, said: “Keeping patients with chronic diseases out of hospital and managed in their homes is of critical importance to all hospital groups and providers worldwide. Our new partnership in the USA with Meridian Health and iMPak, working with Wanda Health analytics, will demonstrate how our combined expertise and technologies can improve patient well-being and reduce costs for providers.”
Sal Inciardi, Senior Vice President of Business Development, Meridian Heath, said: “Triventis Health is dedicated to significantly enhancing how medical care is delivered. By integrating two key capabilities – healthcare solutions, and health information compilation and analytics – the company’s products and services help healthcare practitioners make timely, more effective treatment decisions and improve outcomes for individuals living with a range of chronic diseases. We believe that we are uniquely positioned to enable customers to reduce the cost of healthcare associated with managing chronic disease, addressing what may be the greatest burden faced by most health systems around the world today.”