Craneware, hoping to share some of $44 bbn (£27bn) in federal funds going to the US hospital IT under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus programme, as a federal investigation into over-billing in Medicare, also puts pressures on US hospitals to want its products, reports a 34% boost in revenues and a 30% increase in ebitda with pre-tax profits at rising 19% to $8.7m (£5.3m) in the year to 30 June.

The profits were boosted by the February acquisition  of US ClaimTrust and triggered a 10% increase in total dividend to 8.8p a share.

The combined Craneware and ClaimTrust business revenue helps to boost turnover by 34% to $38.1m, with a three-year view for repeat business at $105m, up from $83m in 2010 and including $16m from ClaimTrust.

Keith Neilson, Craneware's CEO, reports the Scotsman already claims its software is used in in about 26% of hospitals in the US, the average hospital only uses one-and-a-half of Crameware nine software packages. "So, for those with which we already do business, we've got seven-and-a-half to sell and, for the others, we've got nine to sell to them - and the total market is worth about $1.8bn a year."

Craneware also has the opportunity to sell software on McKesson's  new Horizon platform a deal it signed in 2009 to run its software on the US firm's IT system, but delays in introducing the system mean Craneware is yet to benefit. Neilson noted a contribution from Horizon was expected by 2012. If delayed it would not affect forecast numbers, but would be a welcome boost if it took off.

BLOXX gets former enterprise minister

Jim Mather, the former Scottish enterprise minister, has taken up his first non-executive directorship since leaving Holyrood. Mather will join Bloxx, the web and email content filtering company with offices in US, Holland and Australian already numbers United Biscuits and the London Symphony Orchestra as clients.

“Bloxx is an ambitious Scottish and US based company that has developed unique technology which has enabled them to gain a strong foothold in the IT security market currently worth $15bn annually”, said Jim Mather. “It is an extremely interesting time to be joining the Board of Bloxx and I’m looking forward to working with the senior management team to .. increase its UK market share and support the significant in-roads it is already making in North America and Europe.”

“I’m delighted we have secured Jim Mather as a non-exec, which together with the recent appointment of Graham Twaddle as CTO adds industry heavyweights to the Bloxx board,” said Ian McNair, Bloxx chairman (right). Twaddle has helped grow the insurance software firm's value from £4.5m to £300m and he has plans to raise the headcount of Bloxx's R&D team.