Elekta to acquire oncology informatics supplier CMS

16 January 2008

Elekta AB (STO:EKTAb) has announced it is in negotiations to acquire US oncology informatics company CMS for US$75m. The negotiations are expected to be finalized by mid February 2008 and closing is estimated to take place by mid March 2008.

CMS has been a pioneer in the development and delivery of radiation treatment planning (RTP) systems for over 25 years and continues to be a leader in treatment planning and oncology workflow management. Successful completion of the acquisition process would benefit Elekta by adding a suite of advanced RTP systems, a large and growing installed base of 1,500 sites in clinical operation throughout the world, and a well-established RTP operational infrastructure to Elekta’s current oncology business.

CMS’s worldwide sales and support infrastructure and large, experienced engineering organization have the potential to accelerate Elekta’s ability to develop, implement, and support new, sophisticated radiation planning, delivery, and management solutions worldwide.

CMS is also the market leader in treatment planning for proton therapy with eight installations in clinical use. Integrating these solutions with the Mosaiq information management system would reinforce Elekta’s leadership in software systems for proton therapy facilities and strengthen the collaboration between Elekta and its current partners in this area.

“The products and market position of CMS are highly complementary to Elekta’s corporate structure, technology portfolio, and R&D roadmap. Both Elekta’s and CMS customers will benefit from our combined strength in product development and support. With CMS in the Elekta Group, we will also gain relationships with a large number of customers who do not use Elekta’s products today,” explains Tomas Puusepp, President & CEO of Elekta. “Elekta and CMS share a common belief in open systems, and a vision that radiation treatment planning is a critical piece of the technology required for emerging radiation therapy treatment capabilities such as VMAT and adaptive therapy. Together, CMS and Elekta can offer and further develop solutions that optimize clinical workflow while also providing well-defined interfaces that allow clinicians to choose systems that best fit their specific needs.”

New trends in radiation therapy planning

“The radiation therapy discipline continues to advance and radiation therapy planning, along with treatment delivery and management technology, enables clinicians to develop and deliver regimens that hopefully will result in improved treatment outcomes”, explains James P. Hoey, EVP Product Creation at Elekta and CEO of IMPAC Medical Systems, an Elekta company.

“Elekta recognizes that treatment planning is rapidly evolving from an event that typically occurred in an isolated area one or two times during the therapy process to becoming a more iterative process that evolves throughout the course of therapy with various steps taking place in different areas of the department. Our aggressive development of Mosaiq RTP as the world’s first distributed toolset for advanced radiation therapy is targeted to meet this growing demand. CMS, with several leading solutions already in clinical use, and a strong pipeline of advanced functionality in development, could significantly contribute to our Mosaiq RTP strategy going forward. CMS’s large, highly competent product creation and support organizations would enable us to accelerate our development and bring these solutions to our customers more quickly and effectively.”

“At CMS, we are excited about the opportunity of joining the Elekta Group and are fully committed to the timely completion of all necessary steps in the transaction,” said Andrew Cowen, President and CEO of CMS.

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