Oracle has acquired the digital medical records business Cerner for $28.3 billion (£21.4 billion), with plans to use the company as an anchor asset into the healthcare sector.

The enterprise software company made the purchase through an all-cash tender offer for $95 per share and the transaction is expected to close in 2022. Oracle expects Cerner to be a huge additional revenue growth engine for years to come as the company expands the acquired business into many more countries throughout the world. 

Cerner is a leading provider of digital information systems used within hospitals and health systems to enable medical professionals to deliver better healthcare to individual patients and communities. Oracle said the company has over four decades of experience in modernising electronic health records, improving caregiver experience, and streamlining and automating clinical and administrative workflows.

The two companies are hoping to transform healthcare delivery by providing professionals with better information, hoping this will help them make better treatment decisions resulting in better patient outcomes. Cerner systems will run on the Oracle Gen2 Cloud, with the goal being to deliver zero unplanned downtime in the medical environment.

As Cerner systems will run on the Oracle database, only specifically authorised medical professionals will be able to access patient data. IT professionals running the systems will be unable to look at patient data too.

“With this acquisition, Oracle’s corporate mission expands to assume the responsibility 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,” said Larry Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer at Oracle.

“This new generation of medical information systems promises to lower the administrative workload burdening our medical professionals, improve patient privacy and outcomes, and lower overall healthcare costs.”

Cerner will be organised as a dedicated Industry Business Unit within Oracle and will be its anchor asset to expand into healthcare. Oracle also intends to maintain and grow Cerner’s community presence in the Kansas City area, while utilising Oracle’s global footprint to reach new geographies faster.

“Joining Oracle as a dedicated Industry Business Unit provides an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate our work modernizing electronic health records (EHR), improving the caregiver experience, and enabling more connected, high-quality and efficient patient care,” said David Feinberg, president and chief executive officer at Cerner. 

Last week there were rumours that Oracle was in talks to acquire Cerner, for around $30 billion. The deal could give Oracle massive volumes of health data for its artificial intelligence services and be Oracle’s largest acquisition ever, as well as one of the biggest takeovers of 2021.