Quintiles completes Encore analytics acquisition

Quintiles announced yesterday it has completed the acquisition of Encore Health Resources, a health information analytics and technology consultancy.

The purchase by the contract research organisation (CRO) was motivated by increasing customer demand for advisory services around electronic health records (HER), Phil Bridges, Quintiles spokesman, told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.

The addition of Encore aligns with Quintiles’ provider strategy, adding significant expertise and capabilities in health-information analytics and technology consulting, clinical data, and related solutions and services.  It extends our services suite and allows us to strengthen our provider-focused solutions.

This will enhance Quintiles’ EHR expertise, which is becoming increasingly important as biopharmaceutical customers, payers and providers focus on measuring outcomes based on real-world performance in terms of clinical effectiveness and value.

Emerging services

Bridges added that as well as these capabilities, Encore has strong relationships with many large US healthcare provider networks and academic medical centres:

This expertise includes a team of consultants with years of experience in strategy and clinical advisory services, implementation of all major EHR platforms as well as analytics and value-based performance improvement. This experience is underpinned by a proven set of tools and methodologies tailored specifically to the healthcare industry.

Encore’s consultants and capabilities surrounding electronic health records will be used by Quintiles in its observational research and clinical trials, Bridges told us.

Encore also has an emerging line of business-focused on services and solutions directed toward the analysis of healthcare provider clinical data, including managed service offerings for eMeasures and value-based components of payer contracts.

Encore Health Resources will change its name to Encore, A Quintiles Company, and will operate as part of Quintiles’ Integrated Healthcare Services segment.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, although Quintiles said at the time of the transaction’s first announcement that the acquisition is not expected to have a material impact on the company’s latest earnings per share.