Valentia founder and Indici chief operating officer Dr Ahmad Javad of Indici will stay on in an advisory capacity post-deal.
Once the Indici deal is closed, Lanas will have spent a total of $200m across its four New Zealand acquisitions over the past few years, including money spent on subsequent expansion and upgrades.
In 2017, Lanas (then known as Clanwilliam Group) bought Healthlink, which provides a “bridge” to connect to electronic health records between New Zealand health providers, for an undisclosed sum. This week, Beggs put it at $50m. He said Lanas had since spent another $50m on upgrades.
Lanas also bought Tonique, which Beggs said is used to manage prescription labels at most NZ pharmacies, and KonnectNet, which digitises insurance medical requests between insurers and GPs.
Between the four acquisitions, Lanas now has around 180 staff in New Zealand, Beggs said.
Beggs founded the firm now known as Lanas in 1996 as a maker of practice management software. More recently, the firm has expanded by acquisition.
Its latest burst of deals is funded by TA Associates, the US private equity firm that took a majority stake in Beggs’ firm in November last year in a US$450m ($800.6m) deal (Beggs’ firm rebranded from Clanwilliam to Lanas as part of the transaction).
The deal included TA Associates establishing a US$115m acquisition fund – the money used for the Indici deal and the pending possible second NZ acquisition.
Why the focus on New Zealand?
“For all the complaints you might hear about it on the ground, you’ve actually got a reasonably well-resourced and well-run healthcare system,” Beggs said.
“There are some truly impressive characters in the healthcare ecosystem in New Zealand. It’s very progressive.”
He noted investment in electronic records and summary records (meaning a patient’s data is kept in one place rather than being replicated across multiple systems, increasing the risk of errors or a security breach).
Health New Zealand is building a national Shared Digital Health Record, moving prescribing fully online through the NZ ePrescription Service and strengthening cyber security across primary care, backed by more than $450m in digital health funding in Budget 2026, Beggs said.
The central government backing for upgrading digital systems made New Zealand “a very attractive market”, Beggs said.
AI focus
The founder said AI would be central to its efforts to upgrade the health tech firms it has acquired. “It’s a huge part of our business plan over the next five years.”
For example, Lanas (in partnership with Heidi Health) has added an “ambient speech” AI feature to its GP practice management software for doctors in Ireland and the UK.
“The doctor and the patient can have a conversation, and the ambient speech AI is able to pick up the critical clinical notes, what has been prescribed, and what clinical actions are required, and record and summarise it as part of the patient record – something that the doctor used to have to sit down and type between consultations.
“It’s intelligent enough to be able to filter out the chit-chat, such as ‘Did you see Ireland destroy the All Blacks last week in the Aviva Stadium?’ and zone in on what you need.”
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
