Booz Allen Hamilton has acquired Epidemico, a Boston-based health analytics start-up for an undisclosed sum, the company announced Wednesday.
This is Booz Allen’s second acquisition in the health services space in recent weeks. The company bought the health care division of an Iowa-based small business named Genova Technologies last week as it expands its presence in the federal health services market.
Epidemico is a commercial spinoff of Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The start-up is known for creating HealthMap, an online mapping tool that tracks the spread of diseases using a computer algorithm. HealthMap has been credited with tracking the spread of Ebola in West Africa before the World Health Organization declared it an outbreak.
Epidemico is part of the growing health analytics sector, which includes companies such as Baltimore-based SickWeather and North Carolina’s SAS Software that have studied social media and text analytics to learn more about diseases.
The purchase of Epidemico is part of Booz Allen’s strategy to target growing areas like health care and invest in innovative technologies, said Karen Dahut, executive vice president of the company’s Strategic Innovation Group.
“The health analytics market is exploding in terms of demand, capability and technology,” she said.
Epidemico’s “deep, rich background” in areas such as disease detection and predictive analytics made it a good fit for Booz Allen, Dahut said. The start-up’s software has been adopted by government agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Homeland Security, both of whom are also Booz Allen clients.
Epidemico employs a staff of 20. The employees will stay in Boston, said Robin Heffernan, Epidemico’s president and chief operating officer.
Booz Allen also released its second-quarter earnings statement Tuesday. Sales declined by 5.3 percent from the previous year to $1.3 billion while profit reduced to $65 million, or 42 cents a share, from $67.8 million or 45 cents a share a year ago. The declines were largely expected, the company said, because of cuts to federal spending.
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