Quintiles pushes into EHR services with Encore purchase

12-May-2014 - Last updated on 13-May-2014 at 08:47 GMT

Related tags Electronic health record

CRO Quintiles on Monday announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Encore Health Resources, which offers health-information analytics and electronic health record (EHR) services.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, though Quintiles said the acquisition is not expected to have a material impact on the company’s 2014 earnings per share.

Brian Kelly, MD, president, payer and provider solutions at Quintiles told us that Encore is a company whose primary business “is the implementation and advisory services around EHRs – this will enhance our EHR expertise, which is becoming increasingly important as [biopharma companies look to] measure outcomes. Encore really brings us the capability to know how to access EHR data and measure things that are important to biopharma.”

Encore’s clients are mostly large hospital systems and academic medical centers, which largely do not overlap with Quintiles’ clients, Kelly said. Quintiles hopes to broker relationships between Encore’s biopharma sponsors that are increasingly looking to real-world data to compare the effectiveness of treatments.

Encore is very good at putting together EHR systems and measurement frameworks in place, Kelly added. Founded in 2009, Encore has more than 300 employees in North America.

This is Quintiles’ second acquisition in the past year. In August, the CRO pushed into the medical device trial sector with the purchase of Novella.

“Today’s announcement signifies the increasing importance of leveraging EHR and real-world information to inform our customers and improve their probability of success,” Tom Pike, CEO at Quintiles, added.

Dana Sellers, CEO of Encore, noted, “Encore was founded with a focus on driving value through data to improve performance and clinical outcomes. I believe that this focus and our vision for the future align well with Quintiles. We will be joining a global leader, and we look forward to working together to help deliver further advancements in healthcare.”

The transaction, which is subject to standard and customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter. Upon completion of this transaction, Encore will join Quintiles’ Integrated Healthcare Services segment and be known as “Encore, A Quintiles Company.”