Global Healthcare Exchange Announces Acquisition of Explorer Surgical

By combining Explorer Surgical’s digital expertise in creating innovative procedure playbooks, telementoring and performance tracking tools with GHX’s cloud-based supply chain network and industry-leading collection of data and clinical evidence, the combined organization will help providers and suppliers deliver a higher quality standard for patient care. Explorer Surgical will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of GHX.

“To succeed in value-based healthcare, organizations must democratize knowledge and data to create more efficient processes and better outcomes,” said Bruce Johnson, president and CEO, GHX. “Patient care decisions must be grounded in data, product expertise and procedural best practices because lives depend on it. Our combined organization will work to reduce unwarranted variation in healthcare and help the industry deliver on the promise of value-based care.”

With reimbursements increasingly tied to producing positive patient outcomes, providers and suppliers will have more shared responsibility for managing risk. Surgical and procedural suites involve the most invasive and expensive forms of patient care, presenting challenges for meeting value-based care goals. These challenges are further compounded in the realm of costly implantable devices, where providers increasingly rely on their network, including suppliers, to improve outcomes and reduce costs.

As more procedures migrate to outpatient settings, scaling collaboration and knowledge-sharing between healthcare providers and suppliers becomes more important. Telementoring can help accelerate broad dissemination of specialized knowledge to providers across the country – a critical factor in reducing time to market for new devices and advancing procedural techniques. Digital and remote case support, offered by Explorer Surgical, enables providers and suppliers to collaborate on a much larger scale, making procedures a more efficient and repeatable process through accessible training and based on the clinical evidence. This helps ground more patient care decisions in the best practices and data needed to yield improved outcomes.

“Healthcare is rife with inefficiency and must standardize the operational and clinical best practices and products that yield the best possible patient outcomes,” said Jennifer Fried, co-founder and CEO of Explorer Surgical. “With GHX, Explorer Surgical is well-positioned to provide tremendous value to the  healthcare supplier industry and providers by integrating our technology to improve the delivery of care. Combining our companies accelerates our core mission of using technology and data to enable all healthcare stakeholders to collaborate to improve outcomes in the most intensive of care settings. I’d like to thank Cody Kittle at Elliott Management and Ned Scheetz at Aphelion Capital for their unwavering support in driving this result.”

This acquisition follows GHX’s January 2020 acquisition of Lumere as part of its strategy to continue equipping providers and suppliers with better data and information to improve patient care.

Founded in 2015, Explorer Surgical’s technology was initially developed at The University of Chicago Medical Center by Jennifer Fried and Dr. Alex Langerman. The company was financially backed by Elliott Management, Aphelion Capital and The University of Chicago, and has worked with healthcare supplier customers across multiple therapeutic areas. Key Explorer Surgical leaders, including Jennifer Fried and CTO Eugene Fine will remain with the combined organization, with Fried serving as General Manager of Explorer Surgical, a GHX Company. The company’s operations will remain in Chicago.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. BakerHostetler LLP acted as legal advisor to GHX. Barnes & Thornburg LLP acted as legal advisor and Piper Sandler & Co. acted as financial advisor to Explorer Surgical.