Revenue-cycle management company R1 RCM on Monday said it plans to acquire Cloudmed in an all-stock transaction that values Cloudmed at roughly $4.1 billion. Cloudmed uses artificial intelligence and automation to analyze medical records, payment data and medical insurance models for revenue-cycle management. The company has more than 3,100 healthcare provider customers. The acquisition fits into R1's vision of creating an end-to-end platform for managing revenue cycle for providers and engaging patients around payment. "We have been very deliberate and very consistent in terms of our excitement around the long-term automation potential that exists in this industry," said Joe Flanagan, R1's president and chief executive officer, Monday at a conference. "This transaction significantly increases our data footprint and we are positioned very well for meaningful innovation in and around data." Cloudmed's data will accelerate R1's work in machine learning, which requires data to create accurate models, Flanagan said at J.P. Morgan's annual healthcare conference--which is virtual for the second year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.