Maincare joins Docaposte to accelerate the digital transition of healthcare establishments – Le Journal des Entreprises

In mid-January, the Girondin health software publisher Maincare (over €80 million in turnover in 2022, 650 employees), born in 1999 and based in Canéjan (Gironde), comes under the fold of Docaposte (over €826 million euros in business in 2022, 7,500 employees), digital subsidiary of the La Poste group, to strengthen its strategy around digital health. Maincare has been developing more than fifteen software for 24 years, centered around the management of establishments (finances, logistics, HR, etc.) and the production of care (in particular the computerized patient file). It brings together more than 1,000 customers, mainly French university hospitals and CHRs.

Common ambitions

This second largest acquisition to date for Docaposte (after Softeam, expert in finance, banking and insurance consulting, for €150 million in 2019) strengthens the health portfolio of this specialist in “digital trust”, which represented – before the acquisition- a business volume of 25 million euros and now aims to exceed 200 million euros by 2030.

The software manufacturer is not the first acquisition of the subsidiary’s health division. In particular, there was the Parisian start-up InAdvans in 2020, which develops white label regulatory compliance software for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, or the Lyon-based design office Heva, specializing in the analysis of health data, acquired in April 2022.

This Girondine acquisition remains, despite everything, the most important to date. “Our objective is to bring healthcare players towards data-enabled management of establishments and to accelerate the digital transformation of healthcare systems”, explains Carla Gomes, director of the healthcare market at Docaposte. “There was a strong complementarity with Maincare to meet our main objectives of making establishments work better, facilitating the relationship with patients and advancing clinical research, all to give time back to caregivers”, adds the manager.

Maincare, which has built its development around successive takeovers, has around ten sites, half of which are dedicated to R&D. “This industrial merger is intended. Discussions began at the end of 2021 by sharing our potential areas of synergy. We signed a strategic partnership in the spring. With this acquisition, we will accelerate”, confirms Olivier Barets, Executive Director of Maincare. “For example, we work primarily on the French market, but we will support the dynamics of Docaposte on the European market as soon as it is launched”.

Security issues

The software publisher, which alone represents 30% of the market share of hospital software in equipped establishments, already has several projects on fire. If its R & D center remains its main “strike force” (it brings together 300 people), it is because it is currently working on a modernization of two of its historical software, M-Gam (administrative management of the patient) and M -Crossway (computerized patient file), which should be finalized in 2024. One of the key challenges of its development is already complementary with the solutions of its new owner: digital trust. “We reinforce both the security of the software from its design stage, but also that of the infrastructures that host it (data centers). More and more customers are asking us to host their system, as the hospital does not have sometimes not the economic or human resources to achieve this level of security”, explains Olivier Barets. “For the vast majority of new computerized patient records, customers request that they be hosted in this type of data center. We have developed a specific offer. Thanks to the takeover, we will also integrate Docaposte services into our solutions such as the digital safe, the electronic signature or the consent management brick. This will allow us to enrich the security and validity of the data structure”.

predictive future

Finally, the strategy of the two companies focuses on the use of data and its predictive role in the management of healthcare establishments. “These data can make it possible to accelerate research and improve care, in particular thanks to the use of artificial intelligence which will be able to analyze a very large volume of data. Our customers expect a lot from us in terms of our ability to predict the very activities of the hospital, such as the flow of patients in the emergency room or in other services”, continues Olivier Barets.

“Our data scientists have already done this on the scale of the Hospices Civils de Lyon. We have been able to predict with a high rate of reliability the workload of the emergency services to fifteen days”. Maincare should continue to recruit in the coming weeks to modernize its software. It is opening around thirty positions in its Bordeaux area, mainly developers, project managers responsible for deploying the software and consultants supporting this deployment. The aim of these new recruitments: to continue to strengthen its R&D division, in which it has invested more than 20 million euros in 2022.