Softheon lands health care contract

Eugene Sayan arrived in the United States from his native Turkey in 1986 with a degree in engineering, and little else. Certainly little money.

But, Sayan likes to say, "I landed at JFK and never left."

In the years since, he earned another degree, in software engineering, from New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, and won a spot to grow a company at Stony Brook University's High Technology Incubator.

Now, Sayan, 48, says his Hauppauge-based company, Softheon Inc., has landed a major deal that he says will put it on the map in the health-care information-technology industry.

Softheon earlier this week signed a contract with Computer Sciences Corp., one of the world's largest information-technology companies, to deliver Softheon software to the health care industry using cloud-based technology. The software will address the data processing needs of insurance companies as they comply with the 2014 deadline of the U.S. health care reform act. The act mandates that most Americans have health insurance and most businesses offer it to their employees. Some states have challenged it, and the U.S. Supreme Court has set oral arguments for March, with a ruling expected by the end of June.

"The CSC relationship will enable us to reach a much broader audience, because they are going to deploy our technology at their large data centers," Sayan said. Ten-year-old, privately held Softheon currently serves about 25 health care plans, as well as Dell Computer. It has about 50 employees, the majority of them Stony Brook graduates, Sayan said.

Mark Roman, president of CSC Global Healthcare Operations, said in a statement that the deal "will allow our health care plans to reduce administrative processes and lower technology costs." Sayan declined to disclose financial aspects of the deal. CSC officials did not return calls.

Peter Goldsmith, chairman of the Melville-based technology organization LISTnet, said Softheon is tapping into one of the fastest-growing industries in the country, health-care information technology.

Sayan said the CSC relationship could mean "significant" growth in the company's hiring. "The company has plans to increase its head count," he said.