A big week in health IT kicked off on Monday with the announcement that medical specialist software vendor Genie Solutions had been sold to Citadel Group for the very healthy sum of $260 million. Considering that a majority stake in Genie was sold just four years ago for $55m, this is a pretty good return on investment for its private equity investors, but coming off the back of the extraordinary amount that Telstra Health paid for MedicalDirector, it shows that there is serious money out there at the moment for technology stocks.

We understand from immaculate sources that Genie Solutions was still planning to publicly list as late as last week, but had also been in discussions with Citadel for some time and was also offered up to Telstra Health. Telstra had to decide between MedicalDirector and Genie as it could not afford both, and chose the former, paying $350m for the GP sector’s second most used software. While understandable in the short term considering Telstra has long spoken about joining up disparate parts of the healthcare system in Australia, of which GPs are fundamental, but when it comes to long-term growth, we think Genie was the better bet.