As MedX Health Corp heads into 2022, the global leader in teledermatology has launched the next step in its business plan for North America.
The company is now offering its life-saving skin-screening services in blended physician and pharmacy clinic settings in Ontario - two ProMed Pharmacy locations in Ottawa and a Medicure clinic in Mississauga. Thousands of patients now have access to the company’s platform.
What’s novel about the roll-out is that patients can now enter the pharmacy and have a telemedicine consultation with a general practitioner and receive an immediate referral to use the company’s technology on site.
MedX said that incorporating a telemedicine consultation with a general practitioner is a vital step toward making its screening services easily accessible to the public by facilitating both the referral and the screening at the same location. Also, by providing such a “walk-in” service, the company is targeting those potential patients who do not have a family doctor or the time to get a direct referral.
Steadily gaining market share
The Ontario-based company is steadily gaining market share with its DermSecure Screening Platform, which includes the SIAscop, a high-definition image capturing device. In tandem, the company offers its secure, cloud-based patient management system (DermSecure) which transmits and stores patient data throughout the assessment process.
MedX’s SIAscopy is the only technology in the world that captures five high-resolution images of suspicious moles, lesions, and skin conditions, including four spectrophotometric images 2 millimeters (mm) below the skin’s surface.
The technology provides detailed patient scans for virtual dermatological assessment by a certified dermatologist within just 72 hours. MedX’s device can capture perfect clinical images with 100% image integrity, which makes it ideal for dermatologists wanting to integrate teledermatology into their practices.
With that said, the doctor-pharmacy roll-out strategy is just one of many moves MedX has planned as it expands the DermSecure Screening Platform network across North America. To date, its business model has been focused on adding multiple market verticals, such as medical clinics and building hubs, mobile and remote medical practices as well as esthetics and skincare clinics.
“We are excited for what 2022 holds for MedX, as we anticipate more partnerships to grow our national and global presence and realize our purpose of saving lives," said Mike Druhan, president of Dermatology Services at MedX.
MedX's physician-based model allows family practices with thousands of patients to enhance their healthcare offerings. For the company, one of the biggest selling points is that the skin-scanning service is non-invasive, quick, and easy to use in doctor’s offices and does not require specialized staff to perform scans.
One of the company’s biggest tie-ups is with Empower Clinics Inc, which serves more than 200,000 patients through its clinics in Canada and the US. Just recently, Empower started using the screening platform at its The Medi-Collective (TMC) locations across Ontario.
"With skin cancer rates continuing to rise since the 1990s, our partnership with Empower and The Medi-Collective provides an enormous opportunity to address the need for early and rapid detection of melanoma, improve patient outcomes, and potentially prevent lesions from unnecessarily becoming fatal,” said Druhan.
As melanoma skin cancer cases rise, Druhan pointed out that Canada has only 500 or so dermatologists available to serve over 37 million citizens and where wait-times to see a specialist in person can take up to one year. In 2020, an estimated 8,000 Canadians were diagnosed with melanoma and some 1,300 Canadians died. In the US, every hour every day a person dies of melanoma.
Plans for expansion in Europe
But MedX’s business plan also extends to Europe, where it has already generated thousands of skin assessments with its DermSecure platform. In fact, it has launched several commercialization pilots across Europe and the Middle East, building on pilots already underway in the Netherlands, Italy, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates. Most recently, the company struck a memorandum of understanding with London Medical Laboratory Ltd for a pilot and distribution agreement for the UK and Ireland.
Druhan noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the company’s commercialization efforts, but MedX has used the time to upgrade the SIAscop device with a high-definition camera, which can now take images of inflammatory diseases like acne and rosacea.
“It seems as though we're essentially dermatologists in a box now,” he said.
Looking ahead, the company hopes to move beyond the pandemic and intensify its strategic business plan to eventually offer up its DermSecure platform around the world.
"MedX remains focused on expanding its footprint into existing and new target markets, and our team is continuing to establish and accelerate many new commercial relationships and partnerships," Druhan said.
"I remain confident in our team’s ability to expand MedX's teledermatology platform to new markets and greatly improve outcomes for those dermatology patients seeking high-quality, virtual services."
Contact the author: patrick@proactiveinvestors.com
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