Hewlett-Packard Co. said last week it's still committed to a software system for critical-care settings even though the company is disbanding a healthcare information management division.
As part of a comprehensive realignment of He wlett-Packard's Medical Products Group, the development and marketing of the CareVue clinical information system will be merged into a division for patient-monitoring products and services.
A second business operated by the informat ion management unit, the HP Partners Program, will be transferred elsewhere in the medical products group, said spokeswoman Shirley Horn. The program works with healthcare software vendors to enable their systems to run on Hewlett- Packard computer and device hardware.
The company will get out of a business involving system integration services for healthcare delivery networks, Horn said. A variety of consulting firms and other information system companies pro vide such programs.
The medical products group manufactures and develops clinical measurement devices and information systems for the healthcare industry, including monitoring, resuscitation and ultrasound devices. Revenues for fiscal 1995 ended Oct. 31 totaled $1.3 billion.
Hewlett-Packard's overall computing, communications and measurement operations employed nearly 111,000 people and had revenues of $31.5 billion in fiscal 1995.
About 250 of the medical products group's 5,300 employees will lose their jobs, the company said. The information management division currently employs 356 people.
When the CareVue operation moves to the new division, 45 employees will move with it, 30 of them from the ongoing research and development staff and 15 involved in product management and marketing, Horn said.
The system, which is designed for data-intensive situations such as critical-care, intensive-care and neonatal units, was ranked No. 1 in market share in that software category by the 1996 HCIS Market Review published by Chicago-based Sheldon I. Dorenfest & Associates. CareVue posted 73 customers and a 21% share of the market.
Horn said Hewlett-Packard chose to focus on clinical systems that are linked with medical devices, the company's core competency, instead of staying in "people-intensive" businesses such as system integration that require a lot of investment. "Frankly we were spread too thin," she said.
That strategic turn means CareVue won't be expanded into the outpatient side of healthcare delivery as announced a year ago, she added.
Support for the current CareVue and system-integration customers will be moved to Hewlett-Packard's customer services division.
In other moves, the company will exit the market for cardiac catheterization monitoring and recording instrumentation. Its heart-defibrillator and electrocardiograph product lines will be consolidated into a new resuscitation division in Andover, Mass., where the information systems division had been based.