Two Acquisitions for Truven

Healthcare data and performance benchmarking specialist Truven Health Analytics has acquired Joan Wellman & Associates (JWA Consulting), which focuses on helping clients develop 'lean' management systems; and Heartbeat Experts, provider of opinion leader and stakeholder analytics.

Terms of the deals were not disclosed.

Truven combines expert analysis with a range of solutions including research database MarketScan, healthcare payer decision tool Advantage Suite, clinical reference Micromedex, reporting suite CareDiscovery, and hospital operating trends tool ActionOI.

Truven says these services will be merged with JWA's healthcare process improvement capabilities, to help clients improve quality and safety, while reducing costs and improving access to care. In addition, JWA will add to Truven Health's existing lean management offer, and bring additional expertise in related leadership coaching and training.

Truven President and CEO Mike Boswood (pictured) comments: 'By aligning JWA's deep insights into performance improvement with our deep data and analytics and our rapidly growing lean management practice, we are able to offer the end-to-end solutions our clients need to achieve truly transformative outcomes.'


The Heartbeat buy brings the latter's global key opinion leader and market access stakeholder analytics services together with Truven's existing life sciences research capabilities. Truven says this promises life sciences clients 'a complete solution set both for quantifying the value of a new drug or medical device and for targeting and reaching key decision-makers who are critical to approval and adoption of new treatments.'

Heartbeat's current client list includes all of the top 20 pharmaceutical and 75% of the top medical device companies, and the company boasts offices in New York, Brussels, Singapore, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sao Paulo and London. Boswood comments: 'In the era of value-based reimbursement, it is critical to have a strong value message that connects with the right clinical and economic decision-makers. With this acquisition, we will be able to provide life sciences clients with the ability to define value together with the tools they need to showcase that value to relevant audiences.'

Heartbeat Experts President Larry Cohen says the combination will allow life sciences professionals to have informed conversations with 'health plans and other payers, health economists, clinical experts, employers, and regulatory affairs personnel', through access to both 'prescient insights and hard data'

Web sites: www.truvenhealth.com , www.jwaconsulting.com and www.heartbeatexperts.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.