US-based real-time healthcare communications network,NaviNet announced that it had acquired mobile care management vendor Prematics for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition will extend NaviNet unified patient information management offerings to physicians using handheld devices. Specifically, Prematics' mobile clinical messaging and e-prescribing offerings will be integrated with NaviNet's Insurer Connect, NaviNet EMR (electronic medical record) and NaviNet PM (practice management). Just this past September, the two firms announced plans to work together on mobile health offerings.

Some 70 percent of US physicians plus hundreds of thousands of clinicians and other healthcare professionals in the US use NaviNet to access real-time clinical information from health plans, according to the company. The deal illustrate NaviNet's recognition that e-prescribing and clinical messaging has gone mobile.

Here's how the companies describe the end result of the acquisition: "As a result, when physicians are in the exam room prescribing medications via handheld device, they can also use the device to receive information about generic or alternative drugs; submit real-time authorizations; and view benefits information in real time to determine patient financial responsibility," according to the NaviNet press release.

"[Prematics is] one of the early adopters actually of bringing their product down both to the iPad as well as the smartphone," NaviNet President and CEO Brad Waugh said in a video press release. "This enables doctors to be able to do e-prescriptions directly from the handheld device as well as receive clinical information on their patients."

For more on the deal watch the video message from Waugh below or read the press release here