Accenture will acquire Clarity Insights, a Chicago-based company that provides AI and machine learning services to companies in the healthcare, financial services and insurance industries. The deal will build out Accenture’s growing data science workforce, adding a total of 350 employees to the professional services giant.
The two companies struck a merger agreement on December 13. They did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.
Accenture’s Applied Intelligence business employs more than 20,000 people, including 6,000 data scientists, data engineers and AI professionals worldwide. The company has grown the business with a string of recent acquisitions, including data intelligence and AI services companies Knowledgent and Kogentix. In 2019, Accenture spent a total of nearly $1.2 billion on 33 acquisitions.
With its acquisition of Clarity Insights, Accenture will further strengthen its resources to help healthcare companies with data science.
“Clarity has been working in healthcare and life sciences for some time,” said Dr. Kaveh Safavi, senior managing director for Accenture’s global healthcare business. “When the opportunity presented itself (to acquire them), we took advantage of it.”
Neil Huse, president and CEO of Clarity Insights, said the company was drawn to Accenture for their similar approach for how they work with clients.
“Fully understanding clients’ business goals and objectives is the first step to a successful AI deployment,” he stated in a news release. “From there our team can pull together the right data foundation, tools and accelerators that will smooth their path to adoption. With Accenture, we’ll be able to accelerate this shared vision for success and help more clients get there, more quickly.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Safavi said healthcare companies are starting to turn to outside resources as modern analytics require more expertise in AI and machine learning. Most companies are looking for expertise to better examine their clinical or business operations.
Finding that talent can be challenging, as just a subset of data scientists know how to use modern machine learning tools and have industry expertise.
“It’s one of the reasons a lot of companies that used to have in-house data science teams are starting to go to companies outside,” he said. “It’s not something they have easily available.”
Accenture was named a global leader in AI vendor services in 2019 by market intelligence firm the International Data Corporation. Its recent acquisitions are intended to solidify that position, Safavi said.
Photo credit: mrspopman, Getty Images
