Lawson Software ventured further into the hospital market by scooping up health IT company Healthvision, buying its parent holding company, Quovadx Holdings, for $160 million. Lawson, a St. Paul, Minn.-based big-business software developer, announced the all-cash transaction Thursday. The deal is expected to close this month.

The move brings Lawson, whose customers already include Cleveland Clinic and the Banner Health network, broader access to hundreds of hospitals by giving them ownership of Cloverleaf, Dallas-based Healthvision's flagship product. This hospital data-integration software is used in one-third of North American hospitals and nearly half of integrated delivery networks, according to Lawson.

Together, the two companies serve almost 1,400 customers in this field.

"With Healthvision, we see an opportunity for growth with the system integration technology used within hospitals and used to build HIEs [Health Information Exchanges]," Lawson Senior Vice President Jim Catalino, who also runs Lawson's health care division, said in a statement.

Announcement of the purchase coincides with some slightly disappointing financial news from the company. Lawson's financial reports for fiscal 2010, which ended in November 2009, also released Thursday, said that revenues were down from the same quarter last year by almost 9 percent.

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