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Medical device and hospital equipment supplier Hill-Rom Holdings has sold its WatchChild fetal monitoring system to PeriGen, an up-and coming perinatal software company. Terms were not announced.
The sale, announced Tuesday, will allow PeriGen to apply its clinical decision support and artificial intelligence to the WatchChild obstetrics device and offer an integrated product. It also allows Batesville, Indiana-based Hill-Rom to shed a product that doesn’t quite fit its core mission.
“A parent like PeriGen is a lot more suited to host a product portfolio like WatchChild,” said Catherine Tabaka, Hill-Rom’s senior vice president for Patient Support Systems Specialty Products. Tabaka said her division is primarily focused on workflows related to fall prevention, patient satisfaction improvement and infection prevention
The PeriGen AI technology assesses data from fetal monitoring strips every second, looking for what CEO Matthew Sappern called “non-normal events.” In case of abnormality, the system alerts a physician or nurse, either in the perinatal unit or remotely on a mobile device. With the proper integration, data can populate the mother’s electronic health record.
Sappern said his company now is piloting a telemedicine component so PeriGen can allow hospitals without perinatal units to offer remote monitoring services.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Prior to the purchase, PeriGen had integrated with WatchChild and other vendors’ fetal monitors, but was never able to offer a monitor of its own. The acquisition allows PeriGen to offer an end-to-end fetal monitoring product, said Brian Bishop, who was general manager of WatchChild at Hill-Rom. He has joined PeriGen as chief product officer for product strategy and development.
“The fit made perfect sense,” Bishop said.
As a result of the transaction, PeriGen, now based in Princeton, New Jersey, will be relocating its headquarters to Cary, North Carolina, where the 18 former Hill-Rom staffers dedicated to WatchChild work, the Triangle Business Journal reported. Just three of PeriGen’s 55 pre-acquisition employees were based in Princeton, the publication said.
Photo: Flickr user isan
