ACS announces big increase in Adastra profits

Tags: Acquisition ACS Adastra Community GP Out-of-hours Outsourcing SCR Solution

28 Apr 2009

The company that bought out-of-hours software provider Adastra last summer has announced a 142% increase in profits and plans to buy more primary care IT companies.

Advanced Computer Software (ACS) acquired Adastra in August 2008 for £13.2m. It announced this week that Adastra made profits of £2.6m in the six months to February 2009 and £1.1m in the previous six months; a 142% year on year increase.

ACS was set up in 2006 to acquire and manage companies and Adastra was its first acquisition. The company told EHI Primary Care that it had £14.7m cash in hand to fund future acquisitions and that its goal was to be the leading consolidator of software and services to the primary care market.

Vin Murria, chief executive officer of ACS, said it had built a strong and solid foundation for both organic and acquisitive growth.

She added: “Adastra’s market leading position, and our £14.7m cash in hand, places us well to acquire complementary businesses with strong products and services that meet the widening IT needs of the primary care sector.”

ACS said it was actively identifying businesses that fit the board’s criteria. These include products and services that can meet the needs of primary care customers or provide new channels to market for existing products, high levels of recurring revenues and the opportunity to enhance shareholder value by improving efficiencies.

Its possible target markets include polyclinics, minor injury units, district nurses and community services. Its possible acquisition opportunities include software companies for GP practices and community services and hosting and outsourcing services. ACS said it had identified more than 100 possible targets.

The company said the significant growth in Adastra, which supplies software to 95% of out-of-hours centres and 50% of NHS walk-in clinics, included higher revenues related to non-recurring hardware and services in the six months to 28 February 2009.

Developments included the launch of iNurse, a community nurse mobile product piloted in NHS Derby City and successful completion of an integrated solution for the Summary Care Record.

The company added: “The historically high level of recurring revenues it generates from existing products is expected to be enhanced by recurring revenues from new opportunities generated by the iNurse and SCR products and services.”

Fiona Barr

Reader's Comments

Shame that the users find it clunky

30 Apr 09 21:04

Any chance of ACS spending a few bob on bringing Adastra up to date rather than just trowsering all that public money ?

Well I don't know any

01 May 09 15:05

What a strange comment to post, any customer with a problem would surely raise this with the system provider. Adastra is a great system and well liked by the vast majority of users here in the North West. 95% of OOH users can't be wrong! Not sure how much more up date you can get than accessing the SCR/PDS and interfacing to A&E and ambulance systems too. Shame all wannabe OOH system providers can't say the same. Andrew Cooke from Adastra.

Adastra reports are poor

hfdgp@aol.com

06 May 09 00:05

I agree with the first poster. From the perspective of a receiving practice I am dismayed by the paper reports we still receive via Adastra from Primecare in Herefordshire. I am happy to work with Adastra to improve their workflow to EMIS in Herefordshire if Adastra would like to contact me.

Chris Frith 01432 265717 Greyfriars Surgery

Messaging to surgeries

simon.wren@adastra.co.uk

08 May 09 12:05

The Adastra application has been capable of sending messages securely to surgeries electronically and in accordance with the Quality Requirements for some years now, and it has long been understood that this is important for the purpose of maintaining clinical continuity. Although some surgeries still express a preference to receive this information by fax, many others choose the electronic option.

The flexibility of the application enables unscheduled care service providers to work with individual practices to choose the option which best suits them (on a surgery by surgery basis). Whilst I don't know the particular circumstances described in the previous post, I will ask one of my colleagues to contact Chris to take forward his offer.

Adastra

Neil.Bhatia@nhs.net

08 May 09 13:05

We receive OOH reports from Adastra (we use EMIS LV). It is an excellent system, imported directly into the GP record once reviewed by the GP. Just like path links.

We can now add patient details to the "special patients" database at our OOH provider (e.g. terminally ill patients) online via Adastra Web Access. Once again, a superb system.

Neil www.oaklands.info

defacto solutions through positive discussion

glen.griffiths@interactivhealth.co.uk

08 May 09 17:05

Whilst I'm sure that no industry can be totally happy with such a dominant position held by one supplier (that's not a direct criticsm of Adastra by the way), the set of comments above shows just how 'simple' knowledge can be disseminated so effectively through open discussion here within EHI.

Dr Bhatia is quite clear about his views on the patient / clinical benefits of integrating OOH information directly (following review) into his clinical management system and the ability to pre-empt OOH staff with relevant information on the special needs of patients. This is 'Sharing and Caring' at its best and an excellent example of interoperability at work - Dr Frith appears to not be aware of that facility so hopefully he and probably hundreds if not thousands of Practices can now benefit immediately from the facts presented here and move towards a more streamlined workflow and immediate benefits for patients as well.

From what I understand, all EMIS Practices could have electronic transmission of OOH information if the right buttons are pressed - does that extend to Vision and TPP? If not - could it? and could we then make a huge leap forward with existing technology in place?

Glen Griffiths interactivHealth plc

no conflicting interests

My experience

roseneath@ntlworld.com

12 May 09 11:05

Having used Adastra as an OOH clinician and having experience of Windows, Linux, Macintosh and opensolaris systems, my first though on using it was how primitive the interface was. large parts of it still looked like Wordstar (some of you may not be old enough to remember that). The GUI parts for the clinical system were very unintuitive, clumsy and limited in creating a clinical record.

Receiving the reports I find that much of the text is duplicated multiple times through the document and everything is in the same font and fontsize making the reports hard to read. Any useful clinical information is buried in a mass of garbage.

With the money spent you could have had huge input from the Gnome desktop development team, who are reknowned for producing ergonomic software, or even the Apple Macintosh and created a truly useful utility.

Instead we have a polished piece of faecal matter.

defacto solutions through positive discussion

simon.wren@adastra.co.uk

18 May 09 18:05

In response to Glen Griffiths' previous message, I can confirm that electronic transmission of consultation information from Adastra does indeed extend to Vision and TPP, and others too.