Consumer / Employer, Health Tech

Deloitte invests $750M in healthcare, consumer and financial services businesses

The audit, consulting and tax services company is expanding its business ConvergeHEALTH and launching two other businesses in the consumer and financial sectors. It's investing in everything from new software platforms to hiring software engineers, data scientists and other industry professionals.

As part of a broader $750 million investment, Deloitte announced Tuesday that it is expanding the firm’s ConvergeHEALTH business.

The company plans to expand ConvergeHEALTH’s platforms and efforts in a range of areas, such as improving the patient experience and engagement, helping health systems become more cost-efficient and supporting secure, efficient access to healthcare data.

“Since ConvergeHEALTH’s launch in 2014, our north star has been to build digital experience and data platforms that supported the industry’s shift towards personalized, value-based healthcare,” said Christopher Zant, general manager of ConvergeHealth, in an email provided by a representative. “This expanded investment is aligned to that original vision, but builds on the success of these platforms in a couple critical areas.”

A cross-industry focus that reaches into healthcare isn’t unique to Deloitte, as companies ranging from General Electric (through subsidiary GE Healthcare) to Apple have applied scale, outside perspective and technology to addressing longstanding challenges in the industry. But Deloitte expects to increase its influence and expand its ability to effect change in the healthcare industry as well as consumer and financial services industries, where its launching two other businesses — in consumer and financial services —, with the latest investment.

“Deloitte is making this investment because the lines between traditional industries, competitors and collaborators, customers and suppliers, and even human and artificial intelligence are becoming not just increasingly blurred — they are converging,” said Brett Davis, principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP and global assets leader and general manager of Converge by Deloitte, in a statement. Among other examples, he noted that “health care is increasingly delivered in retail settings” and that AI is integrated into how organizations operate.

The company isn’t breaking down its $750 million investment publicly, but a significant portion of that will go to expand and build on the success of the existing suite of ConvergeHEALTH platforms, Zant said.

“We also believe the rest of the investment in new digital banking and consumer experience platforms is relevant to healthcare as those industries increasingly converge with healthcare becoming more consumer-centric and digital financial services becoming more ubiquitous in our lives, including health and well-being,” he added.

Another goal of the investment reflected a trend in industry: a push toward increasing participation in clinical trials. That’s something companies like CVS Health and Medable, as well as Thermo Fisher Science and Medidata Acorn AI are aiming to do as well. (Medable also announced Wednesday that it had created partner network, which includes CVS and Parexel, PPD, part of Thermo Fisher, to accelerate the deployment of decentralized clinical trials.)

Like other organizations, ConvergeHEALTH said it’s aiming to help underrepresented populations gain better access to clinical trials.

One reason participation by minority populations in clinical trials is low is because travel to sites where research takes place, like university medical centers and research hospitals, can be expensive or time-consuming, Zant noted. “Our ConvergeHEALTH digital platforms can help to address that challenge by reaching a broader set of patients in new settings, like a retailer as one example,” he said.

sdecoret, Getty Images

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