Until Inovalon Holdings announced its intentions to go publicThursday, the Bowie-based company was a quiet player in a roaring industry.

The intersection of data and health has become a hot market in recent years as medical providers grapple with the duel challenges of improving care while reducing costs. Major technology companies, including IBM, Google and Oracle, have gotten into the game hoping that the industrys transformation will generate big profits.

But Inovalon has been there since 1998. Founded by a physician with an engineering background, the company collects data from hundreds of thousands of physicians and medical facilities across the country, then uses that aggregated information to help health care providers and insurance companies deliver better, more cost-effective treatment.

The volume of the data has never been so significant and the value of the data has never been so significant, said Keith Dunleavy, the companys founder and chief executive.

Inovalon became the Washington regions newest public company on Feb. 12, pulling in nearly $600 million after selling approximately 22.2 million shares at $27 each . The company trades on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol INOV.

The stock price popped to more than $33 per share at the start of trading Thursday, but ultimately ended the day back at the $27 asking price. On Friday, the stock price closed at $29 per share.

Dunleavy said health care providers and insurance companies started moving toward pay for performance in the 1990s, motivated in part by changes to the government-backed Medicaid and Medicare programs. The trend saw compensation for medical providers increasingly tied to improving a patients health rather than merely treating them.

The approval of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 has pushed the broader health care industry further in that direction while expediting the adoption of electronic health records and other technology. For companies like Inovalon, that means more data than ever before.

The market forces, both capitalistic forces as well as regulatory forces, are really driving in that same direction, Dunleavy said.

As other companies look to gain a foothold in the market, Inovalon already boasts customers in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, Dunleavy said. The company plans to expand globally following Thursdays initial public offering and look for opportunities to apply its technology to other aspects of health care and related industries, he said.

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Health data analytics firm Inovalon is Washingtons newest public company