PointClickCare Technologies Announces Intent to Acquire Audacious Inquiry
According to a Feb. 1 press release, Mississauga, Canada-headquartered PointClickCare Technologies, a healthcare technology platform that enables collaboration and access to real‐time insights, announced its intent to acquire Baltimore, Md.-based Audacious Inquiry, a connected care platform.
The release states that “The combination of PointClickCare and Audacious Inquiry will help accelerate the companies’ mission to address critical gaps in healthcare and enable better care for vulnerable patients. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.”
Further, “Audacious Inquiry is nationally recognized for improving care collaboration by building dense networks of connectivity facilitating the secure transmission of actionable, accurate, and event‐driven data across the U.S. healthcare system. Over the past two decades, Audacious Inquiry has built a suite of SaaS solutions supported by strategic advisory services. The company serves as a trusted partner to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as regional health information exchanges (HIEs), hospital associations, state government, public health authorities, health systems, payers, ACOs and other risk‐bearing providers. Together, PointClickCare and Audacious Inquiry will enable care collaboration and value‐based care solutions for over 150 million lives across the U.S.”
In 2018, we reported that one of the most successful HIE’s in the country, Maryland’s Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP), had a less well-known technology partner—Audacious Inquiry. At that time, the company had grown from a one-man consulting firm (founded by Chris Brandt in 2004) to a 100-person technology integration and services company serving HIEs and other organizations across the country, including the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).
In October of 2019, we reported that wildfires were disrupting the lives of thousands of Californians, Audacious Inquiry and the nonprofit Sequoia Project restated their commitment to the PULSE (Patient Unified Lookup System for Emergencies) initiative. They goal was to leverage their combined expertise in support of displaced populations needing medical treatment and ongoing care as part of disaster response efforts.
We wrote that “Audacious Inquiry first developed the PULSE concept under contract with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) in April 2014. In March 2016, the California Emergency Management Services Authority (CalEMSA) contracted with Audacious Inquiry to develop and operate PULSE."
Just last fall, in September of 2021, we reported that two Texas-based hospitals—Parkland Memorial Hospital and Knox County Hospital—joined an effort funded by the ONC that supports innovative HIE services that benefit public health agencies.
We wrote that “The Texas Health Services Authority (THSA) and HASA (a health information exchange in Texas covering multiple regions) are working with health IT company Audacious Inquiry on the Strengthening the Technical Advancement and Readiness of Public Health Agencies via Health Information Exchange (STAR HIE) Program.”
Moreover, “THSA and HASA are working to demonstrate standards-based, real-time reporting of hospital capacity data for the purpose of reducing burden on hospitals and improving data fidelity. As part of this effort, THSA and HASA are leveraging the Situational Awareness for Emergency Response (SANER) Project, an industry-wide collaboration led by Audacious Inquiry, to adopt and test FHIR standards for more effective data-sharing among health systems and public health entities across the state. Audacious Inquiry will work with Parkland Memorial Hospital and Knox County Hospital to identify how best to adopt the specifications within their systems.”
Chris Brandt, chief executive officer of Audacious Inquiry was quoted in the release saying that “We are incredibly proud to join the PointClickCare family, where we see alignment with the ambition inherent in our mission–to be the single most impactful platform for transforming care. For more than 20 years, we have collaborated with our partners across the country to build networks that fundamentally improve care collaboration and have supported federal and state agencies in developing and implementing interoperability initiatives. We are excited about the next chapter of our work to improve care quality and patient outcomes through our combination with PointClickCare and our ongoing commitment to our partners.”
