I’m doing a quick round up of the big EMR systems and some of the promising new ones. I think I may have over done it on the pharma companies when I did that round up, so I’m going to be a little briefer here. I will try to do the 10 most popular EMRs and a couple emerging ones. This week we have the #2 EMR by market share, Cerner (owned by Oracle)
Cerner
Cerner was founded by a trio of Arthur Anderson consultants as a developer of laboratory information systems in 1979. Their first product was PathNet in 1984, serving lab clinicians and automating some of their processes. Pathnet soon expanded to microbiology, blood bank transfusion and donation, and anatomic pathology use cases.
Cerner went public in 1986, and started expanding their burgeoning Health Network Architecture products, which automated some health care system tasks and quickly expanding to electronic medical charts.
Cernert continued to expand product lines throughout the 80s and 90s from integrated medical records, surgical operating room software, emergency room software, radiology systems, and more.
In 1997, Cerner launched Cerner Millenium, which upgraded the HNA system and incorporated all the company’s software offerings into a single package. This led to significant growth.
Among the most lucrative customers for Cerner is the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which is worth $16 Billion.
In 2021, Cerner was acquired by Oracle for $28 Billion.
Cerner generally has similar ‘old school’ vibes to Epic in the Health tech community, and doesn’t play very nicely with other systems or software, though it is easier to integrate with than Epic for interoperability purposes.
Key Facts
Founded in 1979 by Neal Patterson, Paul Gorup and Cliff Ellig, all of Arthur Anderson
26% marketshare as of 2023
Records for 100 million patients
$5.5 billion in revenue in 2020
$780 million in net earnings in 2020
Acquired by Oracle in 2021
Resources:
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/cerner-corporation-history/
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/31-numbers-that-show-how-big-epic-cerner-allscripts-meditech-are-in-healthcare.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20100104064454/http://cerner.com/public/Cerner_2.asp?id=27214
https://www.oracle.com/health/