The Care.ai will complement the Vocera platform that Stryker acquired in early 2022. Stryker paid nearly $3 billion deal for San Jose, California-based Vocera Communications Inc., a provider of clinical communication and workflow solutions in health care.
“This (Care.ai) acquisition underscores our commitment and focus on our customers,” Andy Pierce, group president for MedSurg and Neurotechnology at Stryker, said in a statement. “Care.ai will help Stryker significantly accelerate our healthcare IT and digital vision to provide customers with real-time, smart and connected decision-making tools that enhance the lives of caregivers and their patients.”
The acquisition comes two weeks after Stryker closed on a deal for MOLLI Surgical Inc., a medical technology company in San Jose, Calif., and a July deal for Artelon Inc., a Sandy Springs, Ga.-based company that produces a soft tissue used for foot, ankle and sports medicine procedures.
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In a July 30 conference call to discuss quarterly results, Chair and CEO Kevin Lobo told brokerage analysts that Stryker has a “very active deal pipeline” after returning to M&A in 2024. Stryker had scaled back on M&A in the last few years to pay down debt after completing the Vocera deal and the $4 billion acquisition of Memphis, Tenn.-based medical device Wright Medical Group in late 2020.
“Most of them are in the tuck-in variety and most of them are not very large, but you continue to see us be active,” Lobo said at the time. “As you’ve seen in the first two quarters of the year, (Stryker is) much more active than we were last year. and we will be very active in the second half of the year. It’s always hard to predict exactly which deals will end, as you know. But we have a very strong balance sheet now given the debt that we paid down after Wright Medical and Vocera, and we’re going to put our balance sheet to work.”
This story first appeared in Crain's Grand Rapid Business.
