In ‘good timing’ for soccer stadium, Steve Malik agrees to sell his company Medfusion
Steve Malik, the Cary-based technology entrepreneur who owns the professional soccer team North Carolina FC, has agreed to sell his company, Medfusion, for $43 million.
The sale comes as Malik is in the middle of an ambitious attempt at building a soccer stadium south of downtown, as part of a multi-billion-dollar development with local developer John Kane. Malik, who owns both the men’s NCFC and women’s NC Courage soccer teams, has asked for money from the city and county to fund the development.
NextGen Health Care, a California company that develops electronic health-record software for health-care providers, will buy Malik’s company and is expected to close the deal in December. The company said Medfusion’s platform is used by 16 million patients.
This will be the second time that Malik has sold Medfusion, a software company that handles medical data and patient communication for health care providers.
In 2010, Malik originally sold his startup to Intuit for $91 million. But just three years later, he bought back the company for an undisclosed amount.
Malik declined to say why he decided to sell the company, saying he didn’t want to comment about the transaction since NextGen is a publicly-traded company.
But, as part of the deal, Malik will spin off part of Medfusion into a new startup.
Malik said in a release he will fund a new company called Greenlight Health Data Solutions, which will work with patient-initiated health data retrieval.
The new company, which Malik said he owns, will be staffed by 27 employees from Medfusion who work in data services already. Malik noted he will be looking for investors and partners in Greenlight, which he said he’s been working on for the past four years.
“I have been on a multi-year journey to help patients be able to consolidate their health record across any provider,” Malik said of Greenlight’s mission. “It has taken quite some time to monetize it.”
Malik said that Greenlight could work with medical and life insurance companies as well as other health-care related enterprises that have to pool medical information across several different sources for one patient.
“For example, in the life insurance business, when you apply they go get all of your health records,” he said. “That can take sometimes several months, and they need that before they can give you a quote. We can get them instantly.”
He added that Greenlight will make sure to consider patient consent in regard to the sharing of data.
The majority of health data transacted today is de-identified and often shared without patient consent, the company said. Malik said Greenlight’s service will ensure patient consent in sharing that data, too.
‘Good timing’ for Downtown South
Downtown South, the development project pitched by Malik, is asking for $330 million, or $11 million per year for the next 30 years, from the city and county to help fund the project.
The development would be on 55 acres around Penmarc Drive and South Saunders Street and would include a 20,000-seat stadium surrounded by apartments, office buildings and hotels.
It’s not clear how much money Downtown South will be able to wrangle, if any, from the city and county’s tourism tax. Raleigh and Wake County managers have suggested that the stadium could compete for a piece of $46.6 million available to several groups.
But Malik said that the sale of Medfusion will provide some useful liquidity for planning the stadium.
“The timing is one that is not coincidental,” he said. “Having some additional capital as we pursue a significant development like this ... is very helpful. So it was good timing.”
Malik added that he is excited to work with a new city council and mayor on the Downtown South project.
“We are very excited to have a new city council to work with and a new mayor,” he said. “You have seen many of those folks being on record as supportive [of the project], and as we continue to work through the feasibility study that the city ordered ... we are making great progress.
“It’s not something that is going to be finished overnight, but I am very pleased,” Malik said.
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/newsinnovate
This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 5:02 PM.
