Having decided to forge his own path, Ian McCrae formed a boutique consultancy firm with some equally high-minded colleagues, called Clearfield Consulting. They were rewarded with early success as they won a number of interesting IT projects, most of which revolved around the Auckland District Health Board in New Zealand needing to computerize and connect all Auckland hospitals.
The Internet wasn’t really "a thing" at this early stage, and the entire Health Board had only 50 green screen terminals available, so Clearfield Consulting decided to place microwave dishes on the hospital roofs to facilitate data sharing. The results created a level of connectivity not previously experienced, and the project paid for itself almost instantly.
Ian and his fellow founders decided to sell the company’s consulting arm to Deloitte and renamed the software arm Orion Systems - which Ian would majority own and continue to lead.
After much curiosity and some early exploration, the team managed to connect to the Internet - likely the first New Zealand company to do so at the time, but definitely the first to leverage for commercial success when they sold their early products online to some eager forward thinking customers in North America.
The first version of our globally recognized Rhapsody Integration Engine was created, and HL7 was chosen as the messaging protocol of choice. Concurrently, after seeing the future potential of the industry, the company was renamed Orion Health to underscore its focus on healthcare.
The team started to really focus on innovation, and came up with the idea of an internet browser-based portal for clinical applications, a concept totally unseen in the market at that time.
Having been around for five years and with a flourishing global economy, Orion Health ambitiously expanded into North America, the United Kingdom and Australian markets. All at once.
One of the first significant international successes came in the form of a major EHR (Electronic Health Record) project in Alberta, Canada. This was a pivotal moment and the NZ based team's insistence on meeting face-to-face with clinicians and other staff as well as executives was met with genuine surprise at the time. The insights gleaned from these diversified meetings helped shape our early products and solutions, and we continue the practice to this day.
Innovation continues with new products, and momentum built globally by winning major deals in the USA, Canada, Australia, Spain, Ireland and many more.
Orion Health began turning heads locally when we won the Supreme Award at the New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards, which turned out to be just the first of many awards won on the local and international stage.
An astounding number of new contracts were won across the globe, and the company geared up for the extreme growth that comes with servicing hundreds of international customers.
Being named the "Most Interesting Vendor" by U.S Health IT publisher Healthcare Informatics proved that there was something special going on at this little company from the other side of the world. Winning the New Zealand Trade & Enterprise International Business of the Year and Supreme Award made sure we were seen as a company to be reckoned with.
After being named the New Zealand Hi-Tech Company of the Year for the second time, we launched our Initial Public Offering on the New Zealand and Australian stock markets and now trade under OHE on both exchanges.
Before we knew it the company had grown from four employees dabbling in health IT, to a leading global health IT organization with around 1,100 employees (and growing), located in 25 offices in 15 countries around the world. Our products and solutions are used in more than 30 countries, by hundreds of thousands of clinicians, and help to facilitate care for tens of millions of patients..
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