Wilmington Healthcare’s unrivalled presence set to benefit all stakeholders
Wilmington plc has reached an agreement to acquire Health Service Journal (HSJ) from Ascential plc. HSJ is the UK’s preeminent health information, insight and networking business. The acquisition adds further strength to the existing Wilmington healthcare businesses, and will enable the combined group to provide unparalleled services into the NHS and private vendor space through subscription information and analytics products, events, awards, education, and marketing solutions.
HSJ will combine with Wilmington Healthcare and will significantly enhance the company’s UK presence and growing portfolio, which already includes Binley’s, NHiS, OnMedica and Wellards. It is expected that the existing HSJ team, led by managing director Andy Baker and editor Alastair McLellan, will remain with the business.
The acquisition helps Wilmington to provide for the growing needs of providers, payers, the private sector in Pharma and MedTech, and other healthcare organisations. By way of example, this is likely to include the combining of qualitative and quantitative analysis to support clients, including the NHS. The combination also offers opportunities to build on HSJ’s leading position in events, complemented by Wilmington Healthcare’s deep relationships with its customers and its existing events business.
Gareth Thomas, managing director of Wilmington Healthcare, said: “HSJ is a primary source of critical information and insight to senior management and decision-makers in the NHS and the wider healthcare sector. Our much-strengthened position will be of significant benefit to clients of both Wilmington Healthcare and HSJ, and it presents many new opportunities. Perhaps most importantly, for a growing sector and one that faces unique pressures, we are now able to provide even more powerful, market-leading insight.”
Andy Baker added: “HSJ is highly respected for the quality of its content and its journalism and the acquisition will further support Wilmington’s market leading content acquisition and analysis. It’s incredibly exciting for HSJ to be joining a business as committed to healthcare as Wilmington and I think it bodes extremely well for HSJ’s subscribers and customers.”
Alastair McLellan, editor of HSJ, said: “NHS providers and commissioners, as well as their partners supplying goods and services, need to be armed with the insight and data crucial to the delivery of cost effective care. We will deliver that critical analysis and, in collaboration with Wilmington’s existing healthcare businesses, we can grow HSJ’s offer to make an even greater contribution to aiding the improvement of health and social care outcomes.”
Notes to editors:
About Wilmington plc
Wilmington plc focuses on four key knowledge areas: Risk & Compliance, Finance, Legal, and Insight (Wilmington Healthcare is part of the Insight division). Wilmington’s businesses enable professionals and their organisations to perform better by providing quality, relevant and reliable information, education and networking.
Wilmington Healthcare within the UK incorporates NHiS, Binley’s, OnMedica and Wellards. Group companies help clients turn data into actionable business benefit and Wilmington Healthcare focuses on working with its customers to turn its high-quality healthcare data into meaningful intelligence to support their business objectives and the improvement of healthcare.
About Health Service Journal
HSJ provides critical information and insight to senior management and decision-makers in NHS and to healthcare industry and is comprised of the following services:
- HSJ.co.uk: HSJ’s flagship digital information product is the UK’s premier source of proprietary content, insight, comment and analysis on the UK healthcare sector. HSJ.co.uk has approximately 17,000 subscribers and is sold on an individual and increasingly corporate subscription basis. HSJ.co.uk is widely recognised for its thought leadership in the UK healthcare sector.
- HSJ Intelligence: a fast-growing digital intelligence subscription product with approximately 20,000 data points, which was launched in 2014. It already has 115 enterprise customers from across the healthcare industry and presents a significant growth opportunity for HSJ.
- HSJ Events: 11 annual networking events including awards, large scale conferences and summits.
- HSJ Marketing Services: targeted marketing and recruitment solutions for the healthcare industry.