December 18, 2007 - Royal Philips Electronics today announced a merger agreement with clinical IT and service provider Visicu Inc., which Philip’s hopes to integrate the company’s remote patient monitoring and clinical decision support technology with Philips’ patient monitors.
Philip’s said the merger will help produce products to give more clinical decision support to hospital staff, while and allow them to monitor greater numbers of critically ill patients.
The board of directors of Visicu has approved the transaction and has recommended its shareholders vote their shares in favor of the merger. Based in Baltimore, MA, Visicu makes clinical IT systems that enable critical care medical staff to actively monitor patients in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) from remote locations. The company’s patented clinical IT system, called the eICU program, provides real time, 24/7 patient monitoring in ICUs, and can be likened to an air-traffic controller’s station by centrally networking critical care physicians and nurses to ICU beds using voice and video. Equipped with artificial intelligence algorithms, the system also offers advance clinical support. Philip’s said the eICU program has been shown to significantly reduce patient mortality, length of stay, and medical complications while lowering ICU costs.
Philips’ cash offer of $12 per share represents an enterprise value of approximately $300 million. Closing of the merger is subject to the terms and conditions of the merger agreement, the approval of Visicu’s shareholders, and to customary regulatory clearance. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008.
Visicu’s eICU Program can track ICU patients at various hospitals, and provides continuous monitoring of patient vitals signs, medications, labs and early-warning, which are triggered by deviations in a patients’ vital signs based on their admitting or current diagnosis. “Smart Alerts” use embedded algorithms and protocols to send warning signals to physicians and nurses to provide early medical intervention. The eICU program also supplements hospitals’ critical care staff by allowing them to increase the number of ICU patients monitored by a factor of 15. The clinical and financial benefits of the eICU Program have resulted in several affiliated hospitals electing to expand their eICU program to serve smaller regional and rural hospitals outside of their network, the company said.
Founded in 1998, Visicu has a staff of approximately 100, which includes clinicians, software developers, sales and client services personnel. The company had sales over a 12-month period ending in the third quarter of 2007 of approximately $36 million and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of approximately $9 million. Over the last three years, Visicu has seen it sales almost double.
For more information: www.philips.com/newscenter, www.visicu.com