Japanese industrial conglomerate Toshiba said it plans to unify all of its activities in healthcare into a single division, to be called the Healthcare Company.
The move is part of Toshiba's growing strategic emphasis on healthcare. The company said in February that it planned to make healthcare one of the three main pillars of its business activities, along with energy and storage, and would spend "billions of dollars" on mergers and acquisitions in the coming years. Toshiba's goal is to achieve $6 billion in revenues from healthcare by fiscal 2015.
The Healthcare Company will consolidate Toshiba medical technologies into several main areas: diagnosis and treatment, prevention, and convalescence and nursing care. The company's Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation, which handles its activities in medical imaging, will be a subsidiary in the Healthcare Company, which will have about 9,000 employees.
In addition to radiology systems, the new division will include Toshiba's carbon ion radiation therapy system, which currently is handled by the Power Systems division, as well as the DNA analysis technology in the Materials and Devices division. The company's Healthcare Business Development division will also fall within the new subsidiary.
