Company news

Kansas-based Mediware Information Systems Inc. announced plans Monday to acquire the assets of Indianapolis-based Strategic Healthcare Group LLC, which provides blood management consulting and IT programs to blood centers and hospital systems. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Strategic Healthcare was founded in 2006 by Dr. Timothy Hannon, offering to find cost savings for its customers and to improve safety for patients. Of particular interest to Mediware is Strategic Healthcare’s analytics technology called BloodStat, which has amassed the hospital industry’s largest database of clinical and financial information about blood use, which can serve as a benchmark for health care providers trying to improve their own use of blood. “We believe the combination of SHG’s products and expertise, with our software and large base of prestigious hospital customers, will provide additional growth opportunities and enhance our overall market position,” said Mediware CEO Thomas Mann in a prepared statement.

West Lafayette-based Endocyte Inc. thinks it can use the same technology that lies behind its experimental cancer treatments to treat polcystic kidney disease, too. The drug company announced Friday that tests of an experimental drug in mice slowed the development of cysts and preserved the function of the mice’s kidneys. Endocyte’s drug for kidney disease, EC0371, is a combination of folic acid and the drug rapamycin, an immunosuppressant often used during kidney transplants. Folic acid binds more readily with some diseased cells, which allows Endocyte’s drug combo to deliver a higher dose of a medicine without increasing side effects. That combination has appeared to prove more effective for treating some kinds of ovarian cancer, and Endocyte is moving to win approval for an ovarian cancer drug, known as EC145, in Europe.

The Indiana Health Information Exchange, based in Indianapolis, has added Greene County General Hospital in Linton to its medical-record-swapping network. That network, called the Indiana Network for Patient Care, now includes 90 hospitals and more than 20,000 physicians around the state. It processes more than 3 million exchanges of medical data every day, including laboratory results and medication histories. Swapping medical records is designed to reduce repeat procedures and cut down on medical errors, such as prescribing drugs that interact with one another.