Intelerad acquiring Ambra Health, forming $1.7B enterprise-imaging and PACS powerhouse
Two of the top vendors in imaging management are merging to form a $1.7 billion company that would help oversee more than 50 billion medical images, the two announced Thursday morning.
Intelerad Medical Systems is acquiring Ambra Health to offer a combined platform of cloud solutions for reading, storing and sharing diagnostic scans. Together the two will read more than 130 million exams annually and serve 2,000 customers including the 10 top U.S. hospitals and practices such as Radiology Partners and SimonMed.
“…This acquisition positions Intelerad to enhance imaging accessibility and empower healthcare providers with the tools they need to deliver better patient outcomes,” CEO Mike Lipps said in a statement. “Partnering with Ambra is a significant milestone on our path to provide the most scalable and robust medical image management platform in the industry. And while many medical imaging vendors offer pieces of what providers need, Intelerad now offers the entire solution,” he added later.
The two companies did not disclose terms of the deal, but Bloomberg pegged the purchase price at more than $250 million, citing anonymous sources. Morris Panner, chief executive officer of New York-based Ambra, will become president of Intelerad, reporting to Lipps. This marks Montreal- and Raleigh, North Carolina-based Intelerad’s fourth acquisition since December. Those included Oakland health technology company Lumedx, U.K. enterprise imaging provider Insignia Medical Systems, Heart Imaging Technologies in North Carolina, and Houston-based Digisonics, which provides OB/GYN image review solutions.
Intelerad was first founded in 1999 and acquired by Canadian investment firm Novacap in 2016. The group sold its majority stake to London investment firm Hg Capital last year for more than $500 million. The acquiree, meanwhile, started out as DICOM Grid in 2006 and rebranded as Ambra Health in 2016.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.