IBM is helping start a new health information exchange for the UNC Health Care System.

The technology will connect UNC Health facilities and physicians in Chapel Hill, Raleigh and elsewhere, allowing easier access to and sharing of patients' medical records.

"Our vision is an integrated healthcare system that allows medical information to follow patients," said J.P. Kichak, UNC Health's chief information officer, in a prepared statement.

The exchange is part of broader efforts at the national and state levels to use technology to improve the health-care system and reduce costs. North Carolina officials are working on a statewide health information exchange.

Cisco Systems plans to buy Raleigh-based Inlet Technologies for $95 million, as the technology giant bulks up its online video business.

Inlet's digital-video tools are used by broadcasters, online content companies and other customers to convert content into digital format. That makes it easier and cheaper to distribute over the Internet.

Cisco, the California company with a large campus in Research Triangle Park, has been buying smaller firms in recent years to add promising new products.

The deal's total price also will include retention-based incentives, and Inlet employees will join Cisco's Service Provider Video Technology Group, Cisco wrote in a prepared statement.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of this year.

Inlet's investors include Capitol Broadcasting, the Raleigh-based parent of WRAL, the Durham Bulls and other holdings.

A Durham company competing in the red-hot market for cell-phone applications is charting a new path with a new name.

PocketGear will announce this morning that it's changed its name to Appia, as part of a broader strategy shift.

The company, which raised $15 million in venture financing last summer, will focus mostly on building so-called "apps stores" for mobile-phone partners such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Samsung and Verizon. It will spend less time and resources on selling games and other apps directly to consumers via its own websites.

As part of that shift, which has been in the works for about six months, company officials decided they needed a new brand identity, said spokesman Dov Cohn.

The name comes from "Via Appia," Latin for the Appian Way, a road that connected cities in the ancient Roman Empire. The idea is that the company connects apps developers worldwide to apps stores that distribute them to customers.

Epocrates, the California medical-technology company that bought a small Durham firm last fall, made a splash on Wall Street.

The company's shares began trading this morning at $20 each, after Epocrates sold 5.4 million shares at $16 each on Tuesday night in its initial public offering. That was above the expected price range of $13 to $15.

The shares closed their first trading day at $21.96, for a 37 percent gain.

Epocrates is one of several young companies seeking to take advantage of a surging stock market and renewed demand for IPOs. There are at least 11 companies seeking to raise nearly $1 billion this week, which could be one of the busiest for IPOs since December 2007.

Some of Epocrates' success will reach the Triangle, which hasn't seen a big rush of tech companies lining up for IPOs.

Red Hat plans on sticking around the Triangle and will create hundreds of high-paying jobs over the next decade.

State officials approved two grants for the Raleigh software company today. The first, worth up to $6.75 million, calls for Red Hat to create 240 jobs over the next four years with average annual salaries of $80,525.

The second will be worth up to $11.02 million, and is tied to Red Hat creating 300 more jobs over a 5-year period beginning in 2015.

Lenovo is winning customers in Russia and India, two important emerging markets for the personal-computer company, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The company is offering colorful and cut-rate models that attract first-time and low-income buyers. Lenovo also is using retail franchisees who understand the individual markets and increasing advertising. That includes one of the world's biggest billboards, a 1,300-foot-long spot near the Kremlin, the newspaper reports.

Lenovo, which bought IBM's PC business in 2005, is trying to offset slower sales in the U.S. and other developed markets. The Chinese company has a headquarters facility in Morrisville, where it employs about 1,500 people who design, test and market laptops and other products.

Motricity gets coal this year.

The wireless technology company laid off 12 workers at its Durham offices on Monday. The cuts were part of a recent reorganization, said spokeswoman Jennifer Morgan, who declined to comment on why the layoffs came during the week of Christmas.

"These employees are being considered for other internal positions worldwide, and have received details about our severance benefit offering," Morgan wrote in an e-mail message.

Still, the latest layoffs come as unemployment remains high and many employers remain reluctant to hire until the economy rebounds.

SciQuest, a Cary technology company that went public in September partly to raise money for acquisitions, has done its first deal.

SciQuest announced today that it will pay about $13 million for AECsoft and a sister company. The firms develop technology that complement SciQuest's e-procurement software and services, which allow customers to buy products more cheaply online.

All 30 employees at Houston, Texas-based AECsoft will join SciQuest, which employs nearly 200 people.

The acquisition gives SciQuest "great new products and new customers," CEO Stephen Wiehe said in a phone interview. "The business is run very well from a financial point of view."

Cree will hold a dedication ceremony tomorrow for the house it helped build in Durham.

It's the first home from a partnership between the Durham-based LED lighting company and Habitat for Humanity. It's also the first Habitat house with LED lights in every fixture.

Dozens of Cree employees helped build it, partly as a philanthropic effort, and partly to demonstrate its LED lights, which last longer and are more energy efficient than traditional lights, reducing electricity bills.

The three-bedroom, 1,150-square-foot house is now home to the Rahlan-Ksor family, originally from Vietnam. Prior to moving in, the family of four lived in a one-bedroom apartment. 

Red Hat, the Raleigh-based software company that's sitting on more than $1 billion in cash, will use some of that money to buy a California company.

Red Hat announced this morning that it will buy Makara, a Redwood City, Calif.-based developer of software for so-called cloud computing.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.