Cerner Corporation (NASDAQ:CERN) recently signed a ten-year collaboration agreement with Nebraska based Lexington regional Health Centre. Through the collaboration, Cerner’s Millennium Platform will be responsible for transforming the electronic record of LRHC.
After the announcement of the agreement, Cerner saw its shares up by 0.8% to close at $54.45.
This follows a series of collaborations that Cerner has had recently like the one they had with Virginia’s Behavioural Health and Developmental Services department. The department picked the Millennium Platform to implement new electronic health record across its 13 facilities in Virginia.
The Millennium Platform
Cerner’s Millennium Platform is a health care IT system that maintains digital records by collating patient health information from various care facilities. It ensures doctors and nurses have up to date information about patients.
LRHC will deploy the Millennium Platform through the Cerner Community Works which is a cloud-based model. The model is customized such that it meets community needs as well as critical access.
The Millennium platform has witnessed its demand grow significantly in recent times. Some of the facilities that have adopted the platform include Mid-Valley Hospital as well as the McLaren Greater Lansing Hospital in Michigan.
Health Care IT market
According to projections from MarketsandMarkets, the global market for Health Care It is a field that is growing, and by 2021 it is expected to be worth $280.25 billion. The market drivers include factors such as the need to manage regulatory compliance using HCIT platforms as well as the need to curtail healthcare costs. Therefore the Cerner developments are well timed, and they will continue significantly to benefit from the growing market.
In the last six months, Cerner has seen its stock slip by 10.7% which is relatively favorable compared to the 14% industry decline. However, this is lower than the current S&P 500 index decline of 8.3%.
However, Cerner’s HCIT solutions face competition from rival-players such as Allscripts Healthcare Solutions (NASDAQ:MDRX) as well as Athenahealth (NASDAQ:ATHN).
Currently, Cerner holds a Zacks Rank of 3 with only Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX) being the only better-ranked stock than them in the medical space.