A recent spate of mergers and acquisitions among clinical communications companies reflects providers’ shift away from purchasing targeted tools that address single problems and toward wanting broader platforms that tie in multiple capabilities, experts say.
Symplr, which sells healthcare governance, risk management and compliance software, in October completed an acquisition of clinical communications company Halo Health. Medical products giant Baxter in September said it would buy Hillrom, a company that sells communications tools, among other medical technologies.
Clinical communications company Spok postponed its October investor day amid a “strategic alternatives review,” as the company’s board considers a sale to Acacia Research.
The clinical communications market is consolidating, said Stephanie Davis, a senior research analyst who covers healthcare technology at investment bank SVB Leerink, as many providers have implemented tools over the years designed to solve single problems—such as secure texting or nurse calls—and are now looking to replace them with a central platform that ties in all of those communications capabilities.
“You have a lot of very well-funded health tech startups right now,” all selling to the same customers, Davis said. “It makes more sense to have them consolidated into one platform.”
Davis said she expects to see continued M&A in clinical communications, particularly since the remaining startups are now competing against these broader platforms.
Today’s biggest clinical communications players tend to comprise secure text messaging for physicians, nurses and other members of a patient’s care team, as well as integrating with clinical IT systems to fuel automated alerts. They also tend to tie in scheduling systems, so a user can search for and message a patient’s physician or the specialist on call from one place, rather than having to track that down themselves.
Some products also offer tools to connect with patients and families.
“I think what you’re seeing is a natural consolidation that happens as an industry matures,” said Brent Lang, CEO of Vocera, a clinical communications company.
Vocera this spring acquired PatientSafe Solutions—a mobile app that includes text messaging, voice calls, automated alerts and nurse call notifications—to accelerate its shift to the cloud and increase its footprint among small and mid-sized hospitals and health systems, according to Lang.
The PatientSafe app, since rebranded as Vocera Edge, also brings in data from electronic health record systems, so clinicians can access patient data from text-based messages.
Last year Vocera also acquired Ease Applications—an app that nurses can use to update a patient’s family and friends on their progress in the hospital, such as during surgery.
M&A ramps up for clinical communications companies
“Big providers and health systems are thinking about communication in terms of a platform … that spans the enterprise,” said Dr. Will O’Connor, chief medical information officer at TigerConnect, another clinical communications company. “I think you’re seeing consolidation in (the) space that’s aligning with that behavior.”
Last year, TigerConnect acquired Critical Alert and integrated the company’s middleware software to push alerts from clinical systems to clinicians through TigerConnect’s communications tools. TigerConnect last year also acquired a scheduling product called Call Scheduler.
The clinical communications trend mirrors consolidation taking place in the broader healthcare tech sector.
There has been strong growth in digital health M&A activity so far this year, with 203 deals reported in the first three quarters, according to data from Mercom Capital Group, a market research firm. That’s up from 132 transactions in the first nine months of 2020 and 125 in the first nine months of 2019.
Recent clinical communications M&A
Sept. 14, 2021:
Symplr announces that it plans to acquire Halo Health for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition closed in October.
Sept. 3, 2021:
Spok announces it has begun a “strategic alternatives review,” as its board considers a sale to Acacia Research—which has proposed acquiring Spok for $155 million.
Sept. 2, 2021:
Baxter announces that it plans to acquire Hillrom for $10.5 billion.
April 29, 2021:
Vocera announces that it plans to acquire PatientSafe Solutions for $35 million. The acquisition closed in May.
Jan. 6, 2021:
TigerConnect acquires Critical Alert for an undisclosed sum.
Sept. 1, 2020:
TigerConnect acquires Call Scheduler for an undisclosed sum.
Aug. 19, 2020:
Vocera acquires Ease Applications for $24.2 million.
Source: Modern Healthcare reporting
But not all hospitals have installed clinical communications platforms, as they vary in adoption of these tools.
Roughly one-quarter of clinicians at hospitals said their organization had implemented a secure messaging app that some clinicians used, according to a survey of hospital-based clinicians published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine in 2017. Just 7% of clinicians said their hospital had implemented an app that most clinicians were using.
Most respondents were using a mix of pagers—nearly 80%—and standard text messaging, not related to a clinical communications app. Roughly half of clinicians said they received text messages related to patient care at least once a day, though that requires a clinician to have the appropriate colleague’s cell phone number.
The researchers recently repeated the survey and found “a lot more physicians are using these more advanced systems,” according to Dr. Kevin O’Leary, chief of hospital medicine and associate vice chair for quality in the department of medicine at Northwestern Medicine and lead author on the 2017 study. Their findings have been submitted to a journal but haven’t been published yet.
Despite a rising proportion of clinicians using messaging apps, many clinicians are using them in conjunction with a pager, O’Leary said.
People are used to pagers and know they’re reliable, he said. For adoption of clinical communications apps to take off, hospitals will need to convince clinicians of the benefits—ensuring that there’s a “critical mass” of doctors and nurses using an app so it’s useful for various needs across the organization, and also making investments into reliable internet connectivity and cell service throughout a building or campus.
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