The Most Significant Mergers & Acquisitions of 2021

When it was officially announced the following Monday, leaders from the two companies touted their combined ability 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," according to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison said, and enable "connected, high-quality and efficient patient care" (as Cerner CEO Dr. David Feinberg said). 2. Cerner acquires Kantar Health Oracle is making a big deal of what its Voice Digital Assistant will bring to Cerner customers; Nuance, of course, is also an established player in voice-enabled clinical documentation. There were still other multi-billion-dollar acquisitions in 2021, of course, not least Hellman & Friedman and Bain Capital buying athenahealth for $17 billion – the second time the cloud health IT vendor has been acquired in the past three years. In September, medical products company Baxter International announced its $10.5 billion acquisition of Hillrom, which develops technologies for connected care and clinical collaboration. Just this past week, Edifecs completed its November-announced acquisition of Health Fidelity, which develops risk-adjustment tools for both payers and providers. The goal is to use Health Fidelity's models to help Edifecs clients to manage risk adjustment beyond retrospective review – enabling insights higher up in the clinical workflow, said CEO Venkat Kavarthapu.