Orion Health sells to HEALWELL for $200M – McCrae Tech spun up
Thursday, 23 January 2025
NEWS - eHealthNews editor Rebecca McBeth
Orion Health is to be sold to Canadian company HEALWELL for $200 million NZ, including its Virtuoso Digital Front Door and Amadeus
Digital Care Record, which powers clinical portals used across all New Zealand’s hospital regions.
Its Orchestral health intelligence platform and hospital patient administration system (PAS) will transfer to a new entity, McCrae Tech.
Virtuoso and Amadeus are expected to become key drivers of healthcare artificial intelligence company HEALWELL’s future growth.
Amadeus is the platform behind clinical portals and workstations used across all New Zealand hospital regions to access and share patient information.
Orchestral is a start-up that is soon to announce its first contract in the United States. Orion's PAS is used in the South Island under the name, South Island Patient Information Care System (SI PICS), as well as in two private hospitals.
Around 100 staff working in the Orchestral and PAS businesses will transition to McCrae Tech while Orion Health’s 400 staff globally are part of HEALWELL acquisition.
Orion Health chief executive Brad Porter says there are no staff impacts other than those people that will move between the two entities.
“Our corporate office and R&D offices in Christchurch and Auckland will remain and continue to provide capabilities to our global customer base,” he says.
"This is about aligning with partners who share our vision and bringing advanced AI capabilities to our customers.”
Porter says the Orion and HEALWELL teams got to know each other over the last 18 months and found immediate synergies.
“We had a really good connection with the people, our visions were aligned, and they also had a really strong commitment to keeping the R&D business in New Zealand, which was incredibly important to all of us,” he tells eHealthNews.
Founder and majority shareholder of Orion Health, Ian McCrae confirms that HEALWELL’s commitment to maintaining and investing in R&D in New Zealand was of huge importance when considering the sale.
“We are writing a new chapter in Orion Health’s history and HEALWELL is the right organisation to take it to the next level and deliver better healthcare experiences for all,” he says.
The Canadian firm will acquire all shares of Orion health for $175m ($144m Canadian) with a performance based earn out of up to $25m.
Canada is already Orion’s largest regional market. The Province of Ontario is implementing both the Amadeus and Virtuoso solutions while the Province of Alberta has been a digital care record customer for more than 20 years.
Hamed Shahbazi, chairman of HEALWELL, says “Orion Health brings significant large enterprise customers, recurring revenues, strong operating margins and free cashflow conversion to HEALWELL while providing a significant new channel for the distribution of its best-in-class AI products and services.
“Our organisations share a vision and mission to revolutionise healthcare through AI and data-driven innovation.”
Image: Orion Health CEO Brad Porter and founder Ian McCrae
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