Giddings’s US odyssey

Seasoned sector entrepreneur, takeover and acquisition specialist Barry Giddings has big plans stateside for Avia Health Informatics, the clinical decision software concern he brought from PLUS-quoted to AIM last November with a reverse takeover of Plain Healthcare, owner of its key ‘Odyssey’ software, and a £1.2 million placing. Previously founder-chairman of the £13 million Highcare Group, the silver-haired Giddings has appointed Arizona-based telemedicine and telehealth specialist LifeBot as first US re-seller of the software, which enables doctors to pre-screen patients, replace doctors with nurses where appropriate and otherwise improve efficiency and cut costs.

Under Giddings’s chairmanship, Avia has picked LifeBot as part of its strategy for breaking into the potentially lucrative US market. The company says Lifebot has already started marketing Odyssey through newsletters and meetings with ‘healthcare decision-makers’.

Emphasising Odyssey’s role in helping hospitals, ambulances, transport companies and emergency support services, Giddings and his colleagues reckon President Obama’s attempts to reform US healthcare have thrust the efficiency issues the software addresses firmly onto centre stage.

In the UK, Plain Healthcare, founded 16 years ago by London University Professor Jeremy Dale, won approval for Odyssey from the National Health Service, the prison service and others and is developing partnerships in Europe and Asia.