Finnish healthcare marketplace Lääkärihinta acquired by subsidiary of The Orange Company

Finnish healthcare marketplace Lääkärihinta, or “Doctorprice”, and also known as eMedi Innovations, has been acquired by Palvelutili, a subsidiary of The Orange Company. No terms were disclosed.

Palvelutili is a company providing services for government-issued digital vouchers and personal budgeting solutions used by public bodies to refer to and fund health services for people.

Through this acquisition, the company wants to become a major player in the space for social and healthcare payment solutions. It intends to internationalise in 2018.

Lääkärihinta is a marketplace for searching and comparing medical services and costs. The company was bootstrapped up until this point.

“Individual and consumer empowerment is a big trend everywhere. The winners of tomorrow are not trying to fight this trend, but to embrace it,” said Matti Parpala, CEO of Palvelutili. “The acquisition of Lääkärihinta is well aligned with our strategy, as it strengthens our understanding of consumer needs and gives us new tools to fulfill them.”

“We want to empower patients globally and this is well aligned with Palvelutili’s values. Our consumer service and know-how combined with Palvelutili’s scalable payment solution is a natural fit,” added Kristian Ahlers, CEO of eMedi Innovations. “With joined forces, we can offer all-inclusive digital social and health care solutions and offer the best value to our customers. Our international targets were rewritten in both timeline and scale at once.”

This marks Palvelutili’s second acquisition. It bought SportSetter, a marketplace for fitness activities, in December 2016. The acquisition of Lääkärihinta ties in further with Orange’s wider goal of devising a new digital strategy for its business, it said in a statement.