Athenahealth, Inc., a cloud-based provider of health IT services, has announced that it has closed an acquisition agreement for a $293 million cash deal for Epocrates, a mobile application developer.
The boards of both firms have agreed to a price of $11.75 per share in cash, representing a 22 percent premium over the price per share of Epocrates on NASDAQ on Jan. 4, 2013 ($9.62). According to the news release, the closing of the transaction, expected to occur in the second quarter of 2013, will be subject to approval by Epocrates shareholders.
Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush told DOTmed News that while the company is a leading cloud-based EHR provider in the market, "Our awareness among physicians is quite low — only 30 percent of physicians in the U.S. know Athenahealth and what it does. Epocrates is almost the opposite — 90 percent of physicians know Epocrates and what it does. But it's a read-only application so there is no heavy work that Epocrates is equipped to do."
According to Bush, the two companies will mutually benefit from this acquisition -- Epocrates will benefit from the health care information infrastructure that Athenahealth has built over the last 16 years, while Athenahealth will benefit from Epocrates' mobile computing information brand among physicians. Bush said, "This is a group of intellectually curious people who have a social mission that's rare in business and that's exactly what I would say about my own colleagues at Athenahealth."
