Ryan's District Boards

<p><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/cerner-buy-assets-siemens-health-business-1-3-202741103--sector.html"><img src="http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/nVMe_qKbjax3jc4hI66YbQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTg2O3E9NzU7dz0xMzA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2014-08-05T202741Z_1006990001_LYNXMPEA740XP_RTROPTP_2_CTECH-US-SIEMENS-CERNER.JPG" width="130" height="86" alt="A Siemens logo is pictured on an office building of Siemens AG in Munich" align="left" title="A Siemens logo is pictured on an office building of Siemens AG in Munich" border="0" /></a>German engineering group Siemens plans to sell its hospital IT business to Cerner Corp, a U.S. provider of healthcare IT services, for $1.3 billion in cash, the two companies said late on Tuesday. The deal comes as Siemens Chief Executive Joe Kaeser seeks to focus the group, Germany's second-biggest company by market value, on its most promising businesses to close a gap with more profitable competitors such as Switzerland's ABB and U.S.-based General Electric. Siemens said it was selling its hospital information system business, which has about $1.2 billion of annual sales and around 5,000 client facilities in over 40 countries, because it failed to consistently keep up with competitors. &quot;Additionally, an increasing number of country-specific requirements, such as (those) resulting from U.S. healthcare reform, make it increasingly challenging to achieve sufficient scale effects,&quot; Hermann Requardt, CEO of Siemens's Healthcare division, said in a statement.</p><br clear="all"/>