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Randall Lipps was thriving as an assistant vice president of sales and operations for an important American Airlines division when his life was suddenly thrown into disorder. His newborn daughter, Sarah Ann, was fighting for her life in the trauma unit of a local hospital. Doctors struggled to find a diagnosis until they finally discovered she had a disease that impaired her breathing.
As Lipps watched clinicians come in and out of Sarah Ann’s room, the experienced operations manager grew frustrated with the inefficient way staff managed and used medical supplies. He knew there was a way to remove redundancy and streamline operations to improve patient care. Sarah Ann soon recovered, and the next year, Lipps started Omnicell Technologies to automate the way hospitals and other healthcare providers order, store, track, and administer medication.
Thirty years later, Lipps is president and CEO of what has become a publicly traded company with nearly $900 million in revenue. Omnicell has grown through a series of acquisitions and now uses a cloud platform to power automated, intelligence, and tech-laden robotic pharmacy delivery services in more than seven thousand care facilities around the globe. Its system harnesses data and analytics to reduce medication errors and increase operational efficiency. Omnicell helps its users maintain compliance, grow efficiencies, improve safety, and increase revenue.
In 2021, Omnicell announced several key partnerships that demonstrate industry-wide adoption of its autonomous pharmacy. The Christ Hospital Health Network in Ohio expanded its use of Omnicell products and implemented a central pharmacy dispensing service to replace time-consuming manual steps and automate key workflows.
“Through the Central Pharmacy Dispensing Service, we are able to optimize and maximize the benefit of automation technology, allowing our staff to shift focus from logistical tasks to play a more active role in patient care initiatives,” said Justin M. Gamble, PharmD, network director of pharmacy at the Christ Hospital Health Network in a press release.
Today, nearly half of the top three-hundred health systems in the country are partnering with Omnicell. “Omnicell is delivering the technology and services to address the gaps and challenges across an increasingly complex and critical pharmacy supply chain,” Scott Seidelmann, Omnicell’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer, said in a press release.
Omnicell’s recent $177 million acquisition of FDS Amplicare is growing its portfolio of tools and solutions. The move is aimed at a division called EnlivenHealth, which is Omnicell’s patient engagement and communications platform that pharmacies and health plans use to customize the patient experience. By absorbing FDS Amplicare, EnlivenHealth can bring new financial management and population health components to improve payment collection and other steps.
“We are thrilled to be joining together two innovative technology leaders whose shared mission is to transform both the practice and business of retail pharmacy,” Lipps said in a press release.
Another strategic move is setting Omnicell up for continued success. The company recently opened a new facility in Bangalore, India, to help employees deliver new innovations and strengthen its services. With a quarter-century of expertise in developing AI platforms and mobile applications, Ved Singh will lead the foreign hub as vice president of software engineering.
It’s an important step as industry experts expect healthcare cloud computing to continue its upward trajectory based on advancements in machine learning and a growing investment in IT across the industry.
In a challenging time, health systems and other providers are doing all they can to reduce costs and improve care, and Omnicell is marching on to errorless medication management and a fully autonomous pharmacy.
