With Oracle Corp.’s $28.3 billion acquisition of Cerner final after clearance from antitrust regulators, the California-based tech giant is ready to signal the direction it wants to take the health IT vendor.
In a statement, Mike Sicilia, executive vice president, industries, for Oracle, described briefly how Oracle’s technology might aid Kansas City-based Cerner. “Oracle’s Autonomous Database, APEX low-code development tools, and voice-enabled user interface enable us to rapidly modernize Cerner’s systems and move them to our next-generation cloud,” he said. “This can be done very quickly because Cerner’s largest business and most important clinical system already runs on the Oracle Database. No change required there. What will change is the user interface. We will make Cerner’s systems much easier to learn and use by making hands-free voice technology the primary interface to Cerner’s clinical systems.”
Larry Ellison, Oracle Corp.’s chairman of the board and chief technology officer, will outline Oracle's healthcare strategy at a virtual event on June 9, 2022.
Cerner and Oracle have the capability to transform healthcare delivery by providing medical professionals with a new generation of healthcare information systems, said Ellison in a statement. “Better information enables better treatment decisions resulting in better patient outcomes. Our new, easy-to-use systems are designed to lower the administrative workload burdening our medical professionals while improving patient privacy and lowering overall healthcare costs.”
In a statement, Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle, said the company expects the acquisition to be substantially accretive to Oracle’s earnings on a non-GAAP basis in fiscal year 2023. “Healthcare is the world’s largest and most important vertical market—$3.8 trillion last year in the United States alone. We expect Cerner to be a huge growth engine for years to come.”
“Joining Oracle as a dedicated Industry Business Unit provides an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate our work modernizing electronic health records, improving the caregiver experience, and enabling more connected, high-quality and efficient patient care,” said David Feinberg, CEO and president of Cerner, in a statement.
On the interoperability front, Sicilia wrote in a blog post that Oracle is committed to open APIs to ensure any authorized user can consume health data and insights. “We know a closed system will not create connectivity and unification across the many existing players and systems. Creating more solutions without an open ecosystem commitment would only contribute to the problems we see today with fractured and siloed systems.”
