Behind Epic Systems, A Low-Key Health IT Company Called InterSystems

Phillip Ragon, known as Terry, has quietly built Cambridge, Mass-based InterSystems into a $443 million (2012 revenues) company, selling the guts of electronic health records: databases that can easily ramp up and allow doctors to quickly retrieve patient information. Forbes estimates Ragon is worth $1.5 billion, thanks in part to booming sales of electronic health records. He joins two other health IT entrepreneurs on the Forbes billionaires list–Cerner’s Neal Patterson, and Epic Systems founder Judy Faulkner. Remarkably, he is the sole owner of InterSystems.

Ragon, who keeps a low profile, declined to be interviewed. In 2009, he surfaced in the press when he and his wife Susan, an executive at InterSystems, donated $100 million over 10 years to establish the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. It is pursuing the development of an HIV vaccine.