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Oracle CEO Larry Ellison Wants to Create National Electronic Health Records Database

Oracle chairman and business magnate Larry Ellison has outlined an ambitious plan to improve the nation’s fraught healthcare system by creating a national database built on electronic health records (EHR). This announcement comes shortly after Oracle closed its $28 billion deal to acquire healthcare IT company Cerner, which makes for an ideal partner for such an EHR database. In a virtual briefing, Ellison noted the need to repair the fragmentation of EHRs across multiple disparate databases; he believes that a unified national EHR database is the best—and perhaps only—solution.

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A unified national EHR database could help providers, physicians, nurses, and other professionals easily access patient information from multiple healthcare systems or offices. In addition, employing artificial intelligence across EHRs could prove useful for diagnosing diseases, according to Ellison. Oracle also plans to modernize Cerner's Millennium EHR platform with updated features such as a voice interface, additional telehealth capabilities, and disease-specific AI models. The purchase of Cerner provides a major boost for Oracle in the healthcare industry, with many systems already using its enterprise resource planning and EHR solutions.