Headpoint Advisors has advised the shareholders of Stalis, specialists in healthcare data migration and archiving solutions based in Oxford, on its sale to Egress Group, which is backed by FPE Capital LLP.

Founded in 1984 to provide specialist IT consultancy services and bespoke solutions to the fastdeveloping healthcare IT market, Stalis continues today to be 100% focused on healthcare. The company has unrivalled experience supporting health and care providers across the UK with their complex data migration requirements, providing a complete data quality and migration service and suite of tools. These include a data archiving solution, which can be embedded into EPR systems, providing clinicians with instant access to the full patient record at the point of care. Recent projects include West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust.

Egress Group, also renowned for their data migration work across healthcare, the public and private sectors, has significant system integration and interoperability experience, proven in a number of recent NHS transformation programmes. These include East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust’s move to Cerner and The Royal Marsden Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s Epic implementation. FPE Capital invested in Egress in April 2022, its first investment from FPE Fund III, the firm’s third software and services focussed fund.

The acquisition brings together renowned providers in their respective data management fields, combining more than half a century’s experience working on large-scale, complex, multi-system change programmes. Together, the two companies will offer a unique proposition to the healthcare sector - true, end-to-end data management services and solutions, from strategic reviews and readiness assessments, data migration, system integration, archiving and data quality, through to advanced analytics for proactive and predictive care.

Kate Bryan, Managing Director at Stalis, commented: “This is an incredibly exciting next chapter for Stalis, which we believe will offer significant opportunities and very real benefits for our customers and also for all of our employees. The NHS faces many challenges and data is one of the keys to unlocking real service transformation and innovation in care delivery. But those decisions and changes are only going to be as good as the data they are based upon. As a team, we understand this and will continue to support healthcare organisations to achieve complete data confidence throughout what are complex and challenging system change programmes."

Joe Rooke, CEO at Egress Group, added: “The opportunity presented by combining the experience and track record of both Egress and Stalis is really special. Together, we can offer healthcare organisations true, end-to-end data management expertise, which, we believe, is a unique proposition and one that will be incredibly beneficial. Data migration and system integration are often dealt with as separate workstreams during major system change programmes, but that creates problems, increases risk, duplicates effort and may not deliver a coherent outcome. Approaching all those data objectives with one strategy and one vision is the way forward and, together, we can deliver that.”

Mark Wilson, Managing Director, Headpoint who led the deal said: “We acted for the founding shareholders who have been involved since the beginning and for the management team shareholdersled by Kate, who have been responsible for Stalis’ success in recent years. It was very important for us to recognise the unique objectives of each shareholder and deliver a transaction that worked for everyone. We are delighted that Stalis has now joined the Egress Group and excited for the management team in the wider business.”

Mark Wilson was supported by Oliver Stephens and Henry Baker on all corporate finance aspects. Headpoint worked with Jamie Partington (Partner, Corporate) at legal advisors Higgs LLP along with Richard Freeman and Sam Dell. Management received tax advice from Katie Edwards at Claritas and legal advice from Rick Smyth and Christie Nelson at Wilkes Partnership. The buyside team was led by Llewellyn John, Connor Trendell, Harriet Hunt and Harry Gill from FPE. Egress were advised on the transaction by Stephenson Harwood (Legal), Cortus Transaction Services (Financial), Tax Advisory Partnership (Tax) and Graph Strategy (Commercial).

About Headpoint

Headpoint provides specialist corporate finance advice to owners of private companies. Our clients include business founders, family owners / managers and investors. We advise on company sales, acquisitions, management buy-outs, business valuations and raising growth capital.

For more information, please call Mark Wilson on +44 (0) 845 544 0500 or contact him on email at markwilson@headpointadvisors.com