The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), a leading integrated health care enterprise, and dbMotion, a provider of web-based data-sharing and integration technology, yesterday announced an $84 million initiative to create one of the largest models of interoperability in healthcare.

Ra'anana-based dbMotion will receive at least $35 million of this amount, including an investment by UPMC.

	Advertisement

UPMC runs 19 hospitals and 400 outpatient clinics and doctors' offices. It employs some 43,000 workers and has an annual income of $6 billion.

The Israeli startup, which was spun off in 2004 from Ness Technologies, will provide a flexible platform for UPMC's clinicians to securely access integrated patient information across its hospital system. As part of the agreement, UPMC and dbMotion will create a joint development partnership to create novel interoperability solutions for the health care industry. The result will be a model of interoperability for the regional and national health information networks that are being promoted by the U.S. federal government to improve safety and reduce costs. To facilitate this sweeping initiative, UPMC and dbMotion will also create a joint development effort in Pittsburgh.

Currently, each hospital department head installs a different system, and there is no coordination of the data, explained Moshe Shahaf, a member of the dbMotion board and managing partner at Vertex Venture Capital. By installing dbMotion's application, he said, users gain the ability to search for and look at every detail of information about a patient from every relevant department.

The Israeli firm beat out competition that included software giants like hp, IBM and EDS, which also submitted bids for the tender.

UPMC will be one of dbMotion's first U.S. customers, though the firm's technology is widely deployed in Israel's health system. Clalit Health Services installed dbMotion's technology in 2001, and in 2004, the system was extended to include Sheba Medical Center and Rambam Medical Center.