Epic, Oracle Cerner Execs Have Big Growth Plans
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The EHR landscape is changing rapidly, and executives at the two companies with the largest hospital market share, Epic and Oracle Cerner, are in a race to dominate the next iteration of health IT. Both see their companies expanding beyond the hospital-based EHR to power a larger IT infrastructure. Larry Ellison, co-founder and chief technology officer of Oracle, revealed a plan to build technology for the complex healthcare system after acquiring Cerner in June. Oracle plans to modernize Cerner and build it into a complete source of information about an individual's healthcare. He also said the system will be interoperable and have virtual care capabilities and expanded clinical trial capabilities. "We're building a system where the health records, all American citizens' health records, not only exist at the hospital level, but they are all in a unified national healthcare database," Mr. Ellison said during a June 9 presentation. "The national database s...