Oracle Corporation announced this week that it plans to acquire EHR developer Cerner Corporation for approximately $28.3 billion.

A provider of digital information systems for hospitals, Cerner has over four decades of experience developing and modernizing electronic health records to streamline and automate clinical and administrative tasks.

Through an all-cash tender, Oracle is offering to spend $95 per share for Cerner, which is not only expected to help increase revenue but enhance Oracle’s digital offerings to help healthcare providers make better treatment decisions and save on the cost of their IT infrastructures. It will provide Oracle with a stake in the provider- and patient-facing clinical systems market. In exchange, Oracle will expand Cerner's reach to other countries.
The acquisition is Oracle's largest to date and even surpasses the roughly $10 billion it spent in 2005 to acquire enterprise software company PeopleSoft and the $9.3 billion it spent to purchase NetSuite in 2016, according to Modern Healthcare.

Additionally, if approved, it would be the largest transaction to date in the healthcare technology sector, even more than Microsoft's $19.7 billion purchase of Nuance Communications earlier this year, according to investment bank SVB Leerink.

“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,” said Larry Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer for Oracle, in a statement.

Combined, Oracle and Cerner will work to advance medical information systems to reduce administrative workloads and lower overall healthcare costs. With Oracle’s autonomous database, low-code development tools and Voice Digital Assistant user interface, Cerner will be able to modernize and move its systems to the former’s Gen2 Cloud platform. Systems that run on the Gen2 Cloud will be available 24/7 365 days a year and be able to provide constant monitoring to eliminate unplanned downtime altogether, according to Oracle. Only specifically authorized medical personnel will be able to access patient data on these systems to ensure patient privacy, with IT professionals running the systems unable to see such information.

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