The healthcare industry sees a lot of consolidation between both vendors and healthcare providers this channel tracks mergers and acquisitions between large healthcare systems, community hospitals, private practices, vendors and private equity investors. Health systems have been growing in size substantially in the past decade with mergers with smaller healthcare systems and hospitals. This is largely due to the need to be more efficient amid lower reimbursements and rising costs by building an economy of scale in a larger health system. On the vendor side, mergers have become a common way to reduce research and development costs by purchasing intellectual rights for new technologies, or to purchased companies with new technologies that already have regulatory market clearance.