Oracle's $28 billion acquisition of electronic medical records company Cerner in December 2021 has encountered obstacles, as reported by Bloomberg. Since the acquisition, Oracle has experienced a loss of major clients, shifting its focus from innovative product development to upgrading legacy systems. Engineers have been surprised by the complexity of implementing changes and migrating customers to the cloud, resulting in minimal improvement in the software for existing clients. Despite Oracle's initial ambition to revolutionize the healthcare technology industry and attract massive health-industry customers, financial documents reveal expectations of declining sales in the current fiscal year, compounded by billions of dollars in debt from the deal.
While facing setbacks in the U.S. market, Oracle has found success overseas, securing agreements to run health systems for public entities in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia. Oracle remains committed to its long-term vision of modernizing health information technology and improving patient care, with a focus on migrating Cerner clients to its cloud infrastructure, revamping applications, addressing architectural issues, resolving bugs, and integrating artificial intelligence into its products to automate tasks and enhance efficiency.
