Box, an enterprise-focused cloud storage and productivity company, announced this morning that it has acquired Y Combinator-backed MedXT, a firm that provides a cloud-based file storage system for medical imaging. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition fits into Box’s recently announced strategy to pursue a number of industry verticals, which it calls Box for Industries. Healthcare was mentioned specifically at its recent BoxWorks conference.
According to Box CEO Aaron Levie, the acquisition helps Box deal with “interoperability” between sources of healthcare information. Balkanization of that data, according to the executive, “has long hampered [the nation’s] ability to deliver efficient, high-quality care.”
Box’s work to drill into specific industries may give it an edge within market niches — as the larger cloud storage market becomes commoditized, Box, Dropbox and other providers of storage are racing to build value-added services to their technology stacks in hopes of standing out. For Box, which announced new medical customers in recent months, healthcare could be a rich vein.
For more on MedXT, TechCrunch has a write up here. A surprising passage from that post:
Scans, along with any notes a technician might have, are sent from an imaging device to a local server to MedXT’s HIPAA-compliant AWS instances over an encrypted connection.
It will be interesting to see if MedXT’s technology is shifted to Box’s servers and off of Amazon’s popular storage platform.
Box is currently enduring an interregnum period between the filing of its S-1 document and pulling the trigger on its initial public offering. The company, if it decides to, will release updated financials in the coming weeks.