Vocera Communications, Inc. (NYSE: VCRA), a mobile technology company serving the healthcare market, has expanded its patient engagement platform through a new acquisition. Last week, Vocera purchased a 100% interest in EASE Applications, LLC for $25 million in cash. This is Vocera’s first acquisition of 2020, but the company has had a solid financial year, reporting total revenue of $47.3 million for the second quarter of 2020, compared to revenue of $44.8 million in the second quarter of 2019. Its remote communication services were probably in high demand due to changes triggered by COVID-19.
The addition of EASE will most likely help them in the COVID-19 environment as well. EASE Applications offers a cloud-based communication platform and mobile application built to improve the patient experience that lets nurses and other care team members send HIPAA-compliant texts, photos, and video updates to relatives of hospital patients. Many hospitals have restrictions on patient visitation due to safety concerns surrounding COVID-19, so these services could be useful to many health systems. In one study with approximately 2,500 family members, 98% said that EASE reduced their anxiety, and 81% reported that the availability of EASE would influence their choice of hospital.
Vocera hasn’t announced a deal in a few years, according to Deal Search Online. In 2016, the company acquired Extension Healthcare for $55 million. Extension Healthcare provides clinical, event-driven communication and workflow collaboration software to hospitals. The deal deepened the interoperability of the Vocera Communication Platform with more than 120 clinical systems, including electronic health records, physiologic monitors, enterprise clinical systems and biomed devices, such as ventilators. It will also extend the scalability of the enterprise-class platform and strengthen workflows within a single system from a single vendor.
