Healthcare IT security firm Imprivata has acquired HT Systems, a company specializing in palm vein biometrics. Imprivata paid $19.1 million in the acquisition, and has agreed to pay up to $1.9 million in retention fees for the next two years and up to $5 million if certain sales targets are met.
Imprivata says the main motivation for the acquisition was to help the company expand in the growing patient identification market, which Imprivate believes to be worth about $2 billion worldwide at the moment. In a statement, Imprivata CEO Omar Hussain called it the company’s “first strategic investment in expanding our market to patients,” adding that “with HT Systems, we are acquiring a leading biometric patient identification product that we can leverage through our global distribution channel and partner ecosystem to expand rapidly and meet our customers’ needs.”
Indeed, HT Systems’ PatientSecure palm vein patient ID system has seen widespread deployments across the US, with over 22 million patients served over 350 hospitals. That’s largely thanks to some major partnerships distribution partnerships, most notably with Fujitsu in 2012.
Imprivata, meanwhile, has been expanding in other areas of healthcare, launching a mobile passive authentication system at the recent HIMSS 2015 conference, and having expanded the biometric authentication capabilities of its Confirm ID platform with a partnership with Symantec just a couple of months ago.
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May 1, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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