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Oracle Buys Health IT Giant Cerner for Almost $30B
Oracle has finalized its acquisition of Cerner, a major provider of IT solutions for organizations in the healthcare services continuum, in a deal worth an estimated $28 billion.
The Oracle-Cerner deal, which closed on June 8 to little fanfare, comes just months after Oracle cloud rival Microsoft's own healthcare-driven mega-acquisition -- that of Nuance Communications for just under $20 billion.
Based in North Kansas City, Mo., Cerner is a 40-year old health IT solutions provider with deep expertise in electronic health records (EHR) technologies. The company generated $1.4 billion in revenue in its first quarter of fiscal 2022 and over $5.7 billion in 2021.
When the deal was first announced in December 2021, the two companies explained that Cerner would become a "dedicated Industry Business Unit within Oracle."
Oracle is positioning its acquisition of Cerner as way to modernize antiquated, un-integrated or otherwise time-sensitive healthcare processes and systems.
"Combining Cerner's clinical capabilities with Oracle's enterprise platform, analytics, and automation expertise will change health and wellness in a way that simply hasn't been possible before," wrote Oracle executive vice president Mike Sicilia in a blog post announcing the acquisition.
He added, "We'll help people access and manage their own health information from wherever they are, so that they have a stronger voice in their care and can conduct more meaningful conversations with their providers."
Sicilia explained that Cerner will be able to tap into Oracle's cloud, data and AI offerings to create solutions that can help health providers -- as well as patients and payees -- access, analyze and share data securely and quickly. For HR functions, Oracle's Fusion suite can be extended to Cerner's customers to improve employee retention and supply chain insights, for example.
"Combining our existing healthcare industry solutions -- from clinical trials to health insurance payor solutions to public health analysis systems -- with our acquisition of Cerner, we believe Oracle has a uniquely positioned opportunity to offer new solutions to a broken healthcare system," Sicilia said. "We plan to support the entire lifecycle of healthcare, going beyond traditional health IT to integrate our infrastructure, platform, and applications capabilities for a more fully connected operational, administrative, and clinical system."