Chicago private equity firm GTCR has entered into a partnership with health care industry veteran David Snow to form Cedar Gate Technologies LLC, a health care information technology group.

Cedar Gate, headquartered in Darien, Connecticut, expects to buy companies and products in the health care information technology industry with the goal of building a leading health care data and analytics business.

GTCR is investing up to $200 million to support the strategy. Snow most recently served as the CEO of Medco, a pharmacy benefit manager, and before that, as president of BlueCross BlueShield. During his time at Medco, the company was spun out of Merck (NYSE: MRK), and Snow served as CEO until Medco was sold to Express Scripts in 2012.

The new venture follows GTCR's the Leader's Strategy, under which the firm partners with management leaders to identify, acquire and build companies through acquisitions and organic growth. The strategy is one of the reasons the firm won Mergers & Acquisitions M&A Mid-Market Private Equity Firm of the Year award for 2013. 

The firm's recent transactions include the July acquisition of Xifin Inc., a cloud-based software company used by health care providers and payers, and the purchase of Cole-Parmer Instrument Co. from Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE: TMO) for $480 million, also in July. 

GTCR is also working to build up Opus Global in partnership with former VeriFone Systems Inc. (NYSE: PAY) CEO Doug Bergeron. The group made its first add-on acquisition, third-party management software Hiperos LLC, in July. 

Many companies have been scooping up health care-related technology assets as providers look for ways to pare down costs now that the Affordable Care Act is bringing more patients into the system. For more, see "5 Technologies Drive Health Care M&A."