Over the past several years, large technology companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have ventured into the healthcare industry, developing tools and software to serve customers in the space. With tech firms offering cloud-based platforms that serve as the baseline for modern healthcare IT, it seems only natural that they would eventually expand from selling healthcare technology into selling healthcare services. In addition to developing their own products, big tech companies have used acquisitions as a means of expanding their healthcare business portfolio, with software giant Oracle making big waves with its latest acquisition of a major healthcare software company.
Oracle has successfully acquired healthcare information systems provider Cerner via an all-cash tender offer of $95.00 per share, roughly $28.3 billion in equity value. Cerner has led the healthcare industry in the digital transformation of medical care, developing care delivery tools that provide caregivers with vital decision-making information to improve business outcomes and patient care. As a new part of Oracle, the company will be poised to expand its business into several new countries around the world.
“With this acquisition, Oracle’s corporate mission expands to assume the responsibility to provide our overworked medical professionals with a new generation of easier-to-use digital tools that enable access to information via a hands-free voice interface to secure cloud applications. This new generation of medical information systems promises to lower the administrative workload burdening our medical professionals, improve patient privacy and outcomes, and lower overall healthcare costs,” said Larry Ellison, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Oracle.
Under Ellison’s guidance, Oracle has reinvented itself via strategic acquisitions, with Cerner the latest in a series of 2021 acquisitions that included GloriaFood, Federos, and FarApp. Once a company focused on producing database software, it has strengthened its position in the market by acquiring a bevy of businesses in a variety of industries. The efforts have clearly paid off, with Oracle’s FY2021 revenues totaling $40.5 billion.
As big tech companies continue to get involved in healthcare, Oracle is clearly setting itself up as a leader of a rapidly advancing industry, bringing capital and expertise to a market space ripe for innovation and improvement.
