Veritas completes purchase of Thomson health unit

June 6 (Reuters) - Private equity firm Veritas Capital has completed its acquisition of the healthcare unit of Thomson Reuters Corp , and rebranded the business as Truven Health Analytics.

Thomson Reuters said in April it was selling its healthcare business - which provides data, analytics and other services to customers such as hospitals, health plans and pharmaceutical companies - for $1.25 billion in cash.

Truven will compete with rivals such as the Optum data and analytics division of health insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc , Verisk Analytics Inc, and Wolters Kluwer .

As it strikes out as a newly independent company, Truven will seek to expand its customer base and sell more of its services to existing clients, develop new products, and broaden its sources of data, said Chief Executive Officer Mike Boswood.

"The changes taking place in healthcare are for the most part dependent upon the better use of data, and we feel that we're ideally positioned," Boswood, who became chief of Thomson Reuters Healthcare in 2008, said in an interview.

Some of the company's main products help hospitals benchmark performance; health plans and employers manage patient groups such as diabetics; and pharmacists and healthcare providers find information abut medicines.

Truven, which has about 2,200 employees, derives 95 percent of its revenue from U.S. customers, but Boswood said he will be looking to expand outside North America "in a measured way" over the next few years.

For Thomson Reuters, the sale is part of the professional news and information provider's plan to shed non-core businesses to concentrate on faster growth areas such as financial risk and compliance.