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Biotech / Medical : Merge Technologies (MRGE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johnny Stone who wrote (24)	12/15/1999 1:45:00 PM
From: a.m. fisher	Respond to of 88

Nice post from the Yahoo! Boards: >>If there is going to be a true internet stock in medical imaging, it's going to be Merge. Merge has the best option right now by far for medical image enabling the health information portals (WebMd, CareInsite, and the HIT company portals), and because of their core competency in medical standards and their independence, they would likely be considered the best option available even if competition should, at some point, emerge. >>>Some background first. For the portals, the difficult aspect of image distribution via the web is NOT displaying the images, in fact, that part is fairly trivial. The difficult aspect is in finding/getting the images using standards in a multi-vendor environment. To do this, you need to be able to tie together patient information and images using HL7 and DICOM. This is THE KEY. And this is what Merge's iWeb DOES. Merge is the market leader in DICOM right now, so they are the logical company to provide this capability because DICOM is embedded in the toolkit. (In my opinion, the portals without competancy in medical imaging would be nuts if they tried to build this on their own, and likely those with competancy wouldn't try either if it could be bought) There is no doubt in my mind that a number of companies, especially WebMD, would be very interested in acquiring Merge. WebMD's patient information portal relies on the effective implementation of standards, namely HL7, in a multi-vendor environment. An important user requirement which would differentiate WebMd from the rest would be to include medical images into those web applications. Merge's deep standards knowledge, implemented software, and internet expertise would make Merge very, very desirable to WebMd. However, I can't imagine that Merge would go for a deal with them, or any other player in the business because their market opportunity is so great. Let's say, hypothetically, that WebMd can't acquire Merge and licenses iWeb from Merge to image enable their web applications (which seems fairly likely considering the alternatives and the research I've done). Since Merge, in my opinion, now has the most complete, most marketable, most cost effective image management solution in the business and a very solid strategic direction, it would also seem logical that WebMd would want to enter into a re-selling agreement for the rest of Merge's products, since the PACS market is still practically unpenetrated. THAT is a SERIOUS sales channel, especially considering that WebMd would strongly appeal to multi hospital enterprises. Then, the other portals would be at a marketing disadvantage without medical images. So how do they solve that problem? Build themselves? Buy from some company other than Merge? (if such a company exists?) Or, go with the established leader? Heh heh, it's just like dominos.<<<