By Clinical Informatics News Staff

May 13, 2015 | ERT on Monday completed its acquisition of PHT Corporation. The acquisition was first announced in late February. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Jim Corrigan, President and CEO of ERT, said the acquisition would enable more innovation, flexibility, and creativity for ERT, and help the company, “extend beyond just eClinical Outcome Assessments (eCOA) data collection to clinical insights.” In particular, Corrigan said he was happy to have more engineers on the ERT team and more project management experience. “We can start to scale,” he said, “and work in areas beyond cardiac safety, respiratory, and eCOA.”

ERT’s existing customers will benefit from the expertise PHT brings, Corrigan said. “Our customers who don’t know PHT are going to see an acceleration around the innovation, flexibility, science, and desire to really push the envelope in terms of using the clinical outcomes assessment solutions,” he said.

The PHT name and branding will be transitioned to ERT over the next several days. Current customers of both companies will continue with their existing products until the end of their service contracts, and ERT will offer both suites of products in parallel until the end of the year. Corrigan expects the entire PHT team—400 employees—to transition to ERT, and to keep all of PHT’s current locations.

Along with the acquisition, ERT also announced that Andrea Valente has been named Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer for the company. Valente previously served at PHT’s Chief Operating Officer.

Corrigan called the new appointment a promotion, and said that among other duties, Valente would create an innovation lab at ERT. “The industry is moving very quickly,” Corrigan said, “ERT is looking to collect data in more novel ways. The innovation lab will look at partnerships with Apple ResearchKit, Oracle, Microsoft, and others, and work to accelerate our journey to the cloud.”

This marks the second major acquisition ERT has made under Corrigan’s leadership. He took the helm of ERT in September 2014, and the company acquired eClinical Insights (formerly PharmaPros) in November. While Corrigan didn’t make any promises, he said that the company’s merger and acquisition strategy is “living and breathing”. He continued, “We are always in the market looking for areas of adjacency in terms of technology.”