Private Equity Firm Acquires Orchard Software; What ' s the Future for LISs?

I am not overly optimistic in the long run about the future of what I will refer to here as classic LISs, sometimes also called best-of-breed systems (see:Defining a"Best-of-Breed" LIS). The fundamental challenge to their future success is that Epic, with its popular EHR marketed suitable largely for large health systems, has gained substantial popularity in hospital C-suites. Its LIS product, Beaker, has also improved substantially in recent years. CIOs would rather interact with a single company that provides both EHR software and"departmental" software like LISs and RISs. Hence, Beaker continues to gain market share.Now comes news that Orchard Software has been acquired by a private equity firmFrancisco Partners (see:New Player in Market for Laboratory Information System Products Acquires Orchard Software). Below is an excerpt from this article:Orchard Software, founded in 1993, has grown steadily over the past 20 years, primarily by serving physician office laboratories, community hospital labs, and independent clinical laboratory companies. With each stage of growth, Orchard added functionality to its LIS and related software offerings and moved up-market to serve larger hospitals and larger labs....What makes the purchase of Orchard by a multi-billion-dollar private equity company noteworthy is the fact that it is the first significant transaction in the LIS sector probably since the mid-2000s, which saw several significant mergers and acquisitions.....
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Clinical Lab Testing Diagnostics Electronic Health Record (EHR) Genomic Testing Healthcare Information Technology Lab Industry Trends Lab Processes and Procedures LIS Definitions and Strategy LIS Vendor News Pathology Informatics Point Source Type: blogs