Dive Brief:

• ResMed has completed its $750 million takeover of MatrixCare, a provider of out-of-hospital software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings, the company announced Wednesday.

• The takeover furthers the expansion beyond sleep apnea devices and masks that ResMed began in 2016 with the $800 million acquisition of Brightree.

• Buying the software providers has given ResMed a fast-growing SaaS division and routes into facilities that may buy its core respiratory and sleep products.

Dive Insight:

Demand for continuous positive airway pressure flow generators and masks has enabled ResMed to grow quickly in recent years, but its most recent results contained signs of a slowdown at this critical business unit. The slowdown was masked by a 25% jump in sales at the SaaS unit, which could pull double duty as both a revenue generator and enabler of the core respiratory and sleep business.

The potential enabling role of MatrixCare is illustrated by ResMed's earlier acquisition of Brightree, a provider of software to the post-acute care sector. ResMed has rolled up its sleep products, such as AirSense, and software to create a connected device ecosystem targeted at Brightree's customers.

Writing when the MatrixCare deal was disclosed earlier this month, analysts at Jefferies speculated that MatrixCare "will likely serve as a beachhead" for ResMed's portable oxygen concentrator Mobi and its other respiratory offerings. In that vision, the 13,000 health facilities and 2,500 home care settings serviced by MatrixCare are a big part of why the acquisition was attractive to ResMed.

ResMed put a slightly different spin on its motivations in a statement about the closing of the deal, which talked up the potential for its multiple SaaS acquisitions to create "an integrated ecosystem of solutions ... to maintain single-patient records across multiple care settings [and] generate analytics and insights that can be applied to individuals and whole populations."

Management at ResMed has bet big on that vision. The acquisitions of Brightree, MatrixCare and HEALTHCAREfirst — another SaaS business ResMed bought earlier this year — cost ResMed almost $1.7 billion. To realize a return on that outlay, ResMed will need to continue growing the acquired businesses while realizing synergies between them and its legacy device units.

Responsibility for handling the MatrixCare side of that equation will fall on its CEO John Damgaard, who is continuing in the same position following the takeover.