Healthcare software vendor Dedalus has named former DXC director of healthcare and life sciences for ANZ Daryll Goodall as its new managing director for Asia Pacific, with plans to grow what is already a large market share in the region as well as making further acquisitions.
It has also taken on the distributorship of iMDsoft’s MetaVision clinical information system for Australia and New Zealand following the European company’s acquisition of the healthcare assets of DXC Technology.
DXC announced last year that it was selling its healthcare IT business to Dedalus Group for $US525 million in cash, with the acquisition completed early last month. It establishes Italy-headquartered Dedalus as one of the world’s largest healthcare IT businesses, and probably the largest non-American one.
Dedalus now has a market leading presence across Australia and New Zealand with implementations in every Australian state and territory health system, every NZ district health board and most private hospital groups, Mr Goodall said. It is particularly strong in patient administration and clinical information systems such as WebPAS, iPM and CareSuite, along with medication management through MedChart and hospital pharmacy system iPharmacy.
Dedalus was first established in the 1980s in Italy by current executive chairman Giorgio Moretti to provide GP software, and while Mr Goodall said there are no plans to bring in Dedalus GP systems to Australia or NZ, he is keen to explore getting back into the primary care market to help build integrated care.
While it has a strong presence in acute care, the company wants to support care beyond the hospital walls by focusing on patient engagement, chronic care and population health management.
It also has strong diagnostic capabilities across laboratory and imaging systems, and now owns Agfa’s healthcare assets, as well as specialist solutions in oncology and chemotherapy.
“We are part of a new family that is deeply healthcare related,” he said. “Our previous boss at DXC, Andrea Fiumicelli, who was VP of healthcare, is now our CEO.
“After leaving DXC, he reached out to some of his colleagues in Europe and found Dedalus and Giorgio Moretti, with plans to create the largest non-American healthcare IT software services business.”
Mr Goodall now oversees the APAC region, which includes the huge Indian market, and plans to grow by acquisition but also by investing in R&D.
“Basically, we want to provide for an integrated healthcare view of the world,” he said. “We are going to extend our business either by leveraging appropriate assets within Dedalus, or acquiring new businesses to augment it. Our belief is that looking at out of hospital care, and integrated healthcare systems, within a socialised healthcare system, means open standards, affordable and scalable.
“We want to offer affordable healthcare systems that are scalable across a region or a country. The main thing is that we provide access to open systems.”
Interoperability is a key theme for Dedalus through the launch of the DC4H interoperability platform, which uses a FHIR API approach and is targeted at the full healthcare market. First launched in ANZ in 2017, the plan is now to combine the DXC technology with Dedalus’ capabilities.
“What we will benefit from straight away is the consolidation of their technology and ours in the interoperability space, because we’re going to create one platform and it’s going to be Dedalus branded,” he said.
“We’re trying to build platforms that allow you access to data in an affordable, open way so that then you can build the systems that you need on top. We don’t for one second think we should provide or will provide everything to everybody. We want to facilitate it such that the specialised systems that have unique clinical benefit or breakthrough are able to be applied.”
Specialist systems such as iMDsoft’s MetaVision for ICU and perioperative care, which is used widely by NSW Health and Queensland Health, is a good example. Under the channel partnership announced last month, Dedalus will distribute MetaVision licenses and services, and support customers in Australia and New Zealand.
Mr Goodall said the iMDsoft solution will enhance the company’s ability to provide a full spectrum of clinical solutions. “We have existing systems deployed across most secondary care settings and we will be able to leverage the large team of over 200 dedicated personnel that we have deployed in ANZ to provide implementation and support services,” he said.
Primary care is also a target despite DXC having let go of its small footprint for GPs and private specialists when it phased out support for the practiX clinical system several years ago.
“We see ourselves getting back into the primary care market because we want to be able to offer integrated healthcare.”
“We want to be part of providing an end to end integrated care model. To do that you need to address both primary care and secondary care, and you need the interoperability across it. So, we will be looking at opportunities to partner or acquire and that forms part of the Dedalus strategy for this region.
“We definitely have an ambition to grow and be much larger in scale in this region. We see great opportunities.”
I don’t see any integration or interoperability here? practiX was always doomed. Interoperability is the single biggest issue in this country and every vendor fragments it further in pursuit of profit.