Shearwater is capitalising on the government's recent decision to axe the National Programme for IT in favour of creating a vibrant market for small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the healthcare sector.
"Suppliers in this market have been starved of opportunity for the 10 years of the National Programme," said Denley. "Now Trusts and care providers are making significant strategic investments in solutions that will bring clinical benefits and deliver cost savings.
"SMEs are included for the first time in years and we're offering portfolio companies an injection of our time, energy, and cash so they can grab this moment and make the most of it."
Denley and Bolton have over 20 years' experience running successful companies, notably building System C Healthcare from start-up to a leading provider of patient management, clinical and social care systems. They will be using that experience to offer portfolio companies direct, hands-on assistance to 'turbo-charge' their growth. This is a new model which provides substantive operational input as well as the strategic guidance traditionally supplied by investors.
Bolton explained: "With System C we built a company from the ground up. We took it through several private and venture capital fundraising rounds, floated on AIM, carried out five successful acquisitions, before concluding an £87m trade sale in May 2011.
"During that time we also built the UK's most successful healthcare IT services business, developed a large scale patient management and electronic patient record system, and successfully installed it at several NHS hospitals and at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan.
"We now want to take that knowledge and experience and re-invest it in British healthcare IT."
Shearwater's services to portfolio companies will include the provision of direct support from a central team of experts in sales, marketing, product development, deployment and corporate and HR services. There will be a particular focus on the use of the latest technologies to transform how care is delivered. The companies are also expected to benefit from cross-fertilisation of ideas, customer bases and markets.
Shearwater is currently in discussions with a number of companies and will be making announcements in due course.
About System C
System C is the developer of the award-winning Medway patient management and electronic patient record software. As one of the UK's most successful healthcare IT services businesses, System C was also one of the few SMEs to thrive under the NHS's National Programme for IT.
Markus Bolton and Ian Denley worked together to grow System C Healthcare from a start-up to a leading software and services company with over 400 employees. System C went through private and venture capital fundraising rounds, was listed on AIM in 2005, and then purchased by McKesson for £87m in 2011.
Denley and Bolton made five strategic acquisitions during this period, including the purchase of social care software company Liquidlogic to create the UK's first major health and social care IT provider.