Cerner Corporation recently announced that its healthcare IT platform Cerner Millennium and population health platform Cerner HealtheIntent were selected by Bakersfield, CA-based Kern Medical. With the implementation of these two platforms, this 222-bed acute-care teaching center aims to provide improved population health management that ensures flawless care across the enterprise.

 

Notably, Cerner Millennium is an Electronic Health Record Platform (EHR) that helps to document and access critical patient data, streamline workflows, and improve both patient safety and their overall experience.

 

The transition to Cerner Millennium is likely to support individual’s care journey with steady patient engagement. Furthermore, Kern Medical will benefit from Cerner HealtheIntent, conforming to regulatory reporting requirements from the Public Hospital Redesign and Incentives in Medi-Cal (PRIME) program in California.

On the other hand, Cerner HealtheIntent is a real-time, flagship population health management platform of Cerner that enables healthcare systems to aggregate and analyze data, thereby, creating a health record for individual members of the population.

 

In the fourth quarter, HealtheIntent played a significant role in adding to Cerner’s earnings. The company ended the year with 144 HealtheIntent clients. Resultantly, population health bookings grew 42% and revenues surged 20%.

 

Furthermore, Cerner signed its first commercial health plan, according to which, HealtheIntent will be the medium of serving more than 300,000 Medicaid and Medicare patients.

 

 

We believe, these developments are going to provide a cushion to Cerner’s stock that declined 2.5% in a year’s time against the industry’s gain of 5.7%.

 

 

 

Per a research by MarketsandMarkets, the healthcare analytics market is expected to reach $29.84 billion by 2022, from $8.92 billion in 2017, at a CAGR of 27.3%. The growth of the market is attributed to increasing government initiatives to boost EHR adoption and growing pressure to curb healthcare costs.

 

 

Cerner carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

 

A few better-ranked stocks in the broader medical sector are athenahealth, Inc. , Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (BIO Quick QuoteBIO - Free Report) and Centene Corporation (CNC Quick QuoteCNC - Free Report) . Each of these stocks sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

 

athenahealth has an expected long-term growth rate of 17.7% and that of the current year is 52.8%.

 

Bio-Rad has an expected long-term growth rate of 20 and that of the current year is 42.9%.

 

Centene has an expected long-term growth rate of 14.4% and that of the current year is 43.1%.

 

 

Here's another stock idea to consider. Much like petroleum 150 years ago, lithium power may soon shake the world, creating millionaires and reshaping geo-politics. Soon electric vehicles (EVs) may be cheaper than gas guzzlers. Some are already reaching 265 miles on a single charge.

 

With battery prices plummeting and charging stations set to multiply, one company stands out as the #1 stock to buy according to Zacks research.

 

It's not the one you think.