NHS patient data groups Arcturis and Akrivia agree £140m merger

Two major providers of NHS patient data are set to merge in a £140 million deal that will create what is expected to become the UK’s largest sovereign real-world healthcare data platform.

Oxford-based Arcturis Data and Akrivia Health have agreed an all-share merger, with the transaction expected to complete during the autumn. The combined organisation will work with 40 NHS trusts and bring together data covering more than 20 million patients currently receiving treatment, alongside more than 100 million aggregated patient records.

The deal will significantly increase the scale of the two companies’ healthcare data operations, which support pharmaceutical companies and researchers using real-world NHS information to understand diseases, treatments and patient outcomes.

The combined business is expected to have particular strengths across oncology, neurology and mental health, immunology and cardiovascular health. Between them, Arcturis and Akrivia already have partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies including AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and Teva.

Akrivia Health has developed a substantial real-world dataset focused particularly on mental health, dementia and neurological conditions. The company says its dataset currently includes 8.1 million NHS patient records from more than 20 NHS trusts, with information provided for research in de-identified and aggregated formats.

The merger also comes amid growing focus on how NHS patient data is managed and the role of large technology companies within the health service. The enlarged Arcturis and Akrivia business is expected to remain UK-owned and domiciled, creating a significant British healthcare data organisation at a time when US technology company Palantir Technologies has expanded its involvement in NHS data infrastructure.

Industry sources described the combined organisation as potentially the largest sovereign NHS data aggregator and patient data health platform in the country.

The scale of the new organisation could strengthen the UK’s position in the growing use of real-world health data for medical research and drug development, while questions around patient privacy, information governance and public trust are likely to remain central as the use of NHS data continues to expand.

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