Oracle Continues to Nashville- And Health Care Is a Major Cause

The legendary founder and chairman of Oracle, Larry Ellison, announced earlier this year that the company will move its world headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee. The announcement came as a surprise to many, as the company has had a decades-old presence in Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas.

This marks one of the many strategic changes the tech giant’s leadership has made in recent years. Among the most prominent initiatives the company has undertaken is a commitment to increase investment in the healthcare sector. Although Oracle has always offered business intelligence products for healthcare applications, this became even more evident in 2021 when the company decided to move forward with the acquisition of a well-known system of electronic health records (EHR) Cerner in a deal worth about $28 billion.

For context, Cerner takes about 25% of the total EHR market share, making this acquisition one of the biggest deals in the medical IT industry. In addition, it confirmed Oracle’s commitment to healthcare and has since provided significant opportunities to: expand the company’s capabilities in healthcare-related AI applications, to encourage new ways of thinking in collaboration and most importantly, to try to create systems that can help better health outcomes.

Nashville is an important part of this story. Gradually, the city has become an innovation hotspot for the healthcare sector. By some accounts, there are about 900 health care companies in Nashville today, along with 17 publicly traded corporations. These are responsible for approximately 333,000 jobs in the region, and add approximately $68 billion to the local economy. One prominent example is HCA, one of the largest health care systems in the world. HCA is headquartered in Nashville and operates 186+ hospitals and more than 2,400 auto care locations as part of its extensive network.

Additionally, the pipeline of talent in Nashville is strong. Oracle has announced it will partner with Meharry Medical College to create a new health technology research center as a way to: engage with community stakeholders, provide training and hands-on education to users, and finally, work with local advocates. , organizations and professionals to ensure that their health care goals are in line with the needs of the community.

Per The Tennessean, Dr. David Feinberg, Chairman of Oracle Health and former CEO of Cerner Corporation, explains that “Health care depends on people caring about people, and you have to trust each other… the community, the way to the importance of doing it, in my humble opinion, is a partner I trust, and we found that in Meharry.”

Dr. James Hildreth, President of Meharry College, echoed this sentiment: “It’s time to do what we’re doing today, and the state of the art means using technology to solve problems of access, information of the quality of care, even as we can. educate future doctors.”

Undoubtedly, Nashville and the surrounding community will benefit greatly from these projects, given the tech giant’s commitment to the area and the ramifications of this commitment, including: a large pipeline of jobs, the growth of local educational institutions , billions of dollars in research and. The use of funds in development, and finally, the opportunity to use new methods and technologies to affect the health outcomes of local communities.