A Silver Spring data center operator announced Monday it had acquired Annapolis company Sidus BioData, tapping its market of health care customers who increasingly need help managing and securing large numbers of electronic health records.
ByteGrid Holdings LLC operates data centers that meet stringent standards for network security and connectivity, and sought out Sidus to gain its reach to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical-device companies. Many of those health care clients increasingly need more data storage and higher security because the information they process is bound by patient privacy regulations and other restrictions.
“It really gives us a much fuller suite of services to offer to a much broader set of customers,” said Ken Parent, CEO of ByteGrid.
The companies would not disclose financial terms of the deal.
Sidus will continue to be based in Annapolis, and its three data centers with about 40,000 square feet of space will be connected with ByteGrid’s national network with 800,000 square feet of storage.
Sidus CEO Jason Silva said the shift to electronic medical records under the federal health care reform law created significant new opportunities for his company.
“Once data started becoming hosted in the cloud, it provided just a huge opportunity,” said Silva, who will become an executive within ByteGrid under the acquisition.
The shift to electronic patient records is expected to continue.
“At almost every hospital, certainly regionally, most of their data is electronic,” said David Horrocks, president of CRISP, Maryland’s health information exchange through which caregivers share patient records. “That includes the images and the large data-consuming applications. It makes sense that there’s more of a data center need.”
Sidus has about 28 employees, while ByteGrid has about 50, plus 30 contract workers, the companies said.
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