Telstra Health, the digital healthcare business of Australian telecoms provider Telstra, has said it is poised to acquire Sydney-based medical software company MedicalDirector for $350 million. It follows the firm’s announcement last month it is to acquire a majority stake in Adelaide-based PowerHealth, a provider of billing and revenue solutions and application integration for hospitals and other healthcare enterprises.
MedicalDirector provides software for electronic health records, patient and practice management, billing, scheduling, care coordination, medicine information, and clinical content for GPs and other specialists in the Australian health care sector. Its software solutions are used to deliver more than 80 million consultations a year and support approximately 23,000 medical practitioners, according to Telstra Health.
Telstra said the deal for MedicalDirector will help it to “connect and coordinate across the continuum of care”. It said: “We can better support patients and providers by removing silos between sectors to improve the delivery of quality healthcare.” The acquisition will bring capabilities in desktop and cloud-based software for GPs and other specialist medical practitioners, it said.
The firm said it will “significantly increase investment” in MedicalDirector after the acquisition completes, in order to provide medical specialists with digital solutions to support the delivery of primary healthcare.
Telstra Health claims to be “Australia’s largest ehealth company”. PowerHealth, its other acquisition, provides software for activity-based funding, the method used to classify hospital clinical activity and allocate funding in more than 20 countries including much of Europe, South Korea, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US. PowerHealth’s customers include the province of Quebec, the government hospital authority in Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia’s ministry of health, most Australian hospitals, and the New Zealand government.
A statement said: “Telstra Health has transformed substantially over the last five years, focusing on combining a range of solutions and platforms across different health and aged care sectors to create a sophisticated and comprehensive offering of digital health solutions. Our strengths in innovation and the safety, security and privacy of our solutions put Telstra Health in a unique position to enable more effective care across the patient care journey.”
