Microsoft to acquire Rosetta and explore healthcare industry

Microsoft now prepares to explore new avenues in health care industry with its announcement to acquire Rosetta Biosoftware, a unit of Merck & Co. The company develops software for analyzing genomes and conducting clinical studies. Microsoft plans to administer Rosetta’s assets into its health industry research management software platform - Amalga Life Sciences. Amalga was established in April, 2009 with the intentions of a new software system designed to transform healthcare and life science research data into the critical knowledge needed for the discovery of new personalized treatments. With the acquisition Microsoft will be able to incorporate genetic, genomic, metabolomic and proteomics data sets into the Amalga software.

Peter Neupert, veep of Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group explained that the new combined offering would enable the customers to improve the management and analysis of genomic, biological and research data that would aid to bring lifesaving drugs and therapies to market faster. It would also accelerate realization of personalized medicine.

After the new agreement, Merk & Co has agreed to become a customer of Amalga Life Science 2009 platform. This will assist Microsoft integrate Rosetta into the management platform.

Currently, Microsoft has started pursuing hiring of critical Rosetta Biosoftware employees. Still the company has not given any clear indication about the number of employees it will hire out of the 53 employees.

The deal would be closing at the end of June 2009 with Rosetta geared technology scheduled to take the markets in early 2010.