IRISH HEALTHCARE technology provider Helix Health has received a €5 million investment from the Ulster Bank Diageo Venture Fund, which is managed by NCB Ventures.

The money will help increase exports, fund further research and development and allow Helix to make a number of acquisitions, according to the company’s chief executive Howard Beggs.

“What they have bought into is a four-year business plan to drive the value of the business to north of €100 million,” Mr Beggs said.

“That is based around taking a successful recipe for products and services and driving those into export markets.”

Helix Health was formed in 2007 following a merger of Systems Solutions and Medicom.

The company focuses on software solutions for healthcare providers, including patient management systems for GPs and dispensing software packages for pharmacies.

This €5 million investment effectively gives NCB a 20 per cent holding in the company with other institutional shareholders, including Davy stockbrokers, which invested in Helix Health two years ago.

The company sought the investment despite the Helix Health Group Ltd making an operating profit of more than €1.4 million in 2009.

Mr Beggs said this was to ensure the company’s “ambitious four-year plan” could be achieved.

“While we have remained profitable, working from that alone would be to stand still.

“Around 10 per cent of our business is from export at the moment but it has very much run on a ‘dip your toe in the water’.

“What we genuinely believe is that the business plan is ambitious but achievable enough to be worth taking the investment on,” said Mr Beggs.

He added that any share dilution caused by it would be counteracted if targets were met, as it will result in the company’s value increasing significantly.

Helix Health is already a market leader in Ireland and has a strong foothold in the UK, which it hopes to leverage in its expansion plans. While a number of countries are being looked at as part of this, there will be a specific focus on the Middle East, with the company already having a presence in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

“We’ve strategically picked the Middle East because we have a number of connections there and the localisation has already been done on products there,” Mr Beggs said.

“Ireland is also very well ‘got’ there too, believe it or not, so we want to use that advantage,” he said.

Besides targeting new clients directly, Mr Beggs said acquisitions were also likely to be used to gain a presence in some markets.

“We would expect to make a number of acquisitions over the next three to four years in the local marketplace but also in overseas locations to help give us a foothold there.

“We’re actively looking at acquiring what we see as complimentary companies that would work in parallel with what we offer already.”

Some of the investment will also be used for research in development, with cloud-based programmes a specific part of that plan, said Mr Beggs.