Lockdown conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in virtual clinic appointments, even when in-person appointments were still accessible. 2020 revealed that scheduling a video call with the family doctor is actually the most convenient option for patients and can improve efficiency on both sides.
The popularity of virtual appointments is expected to continue during and after 2021 and a new wave of companies leading this disruption has emerged.
Today we're looking at industry leader WELL Health Technologies providing industry-leading technologies to enhance the patient care experience including telemedicine, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Long wait times and a lack of digitization are among a few of the inefficiencies currently plaguing the North American healthcare market.
Industry professionals such as Hamed Shahbazi, founder and CEO of WELL Health see this as a major issue holding patient care back. "Primary healthcare experiences for physicians and patients are under-digitized. There has historically been an underinvestment in this area." Although the space of telehealth is relatively new, WELL Health has been swift in their innovation. Since 2018 the company's telehealth software and services have been used by thousands of healthcare clinicians and service providers and the company's electronic medical records (EMR) software and services have been provided to 2,200 clinics across Canada.
WELL Health now operates the largest, single chain network of primary care clinics in British Columbia and one of the largest in Canada and has established groundbreaking digital services nation-wide. This infrastructure has allowed the company and its beneficiaries to tackle some of the key pain points in primary health care such as the maintenance of physical records. This month, WELL announced a breakthrough as the first Canadian company to offer patients their healthcare records on iPhone. This allows for health records to be accessible for both doctors and patients at the touch of a fingertip.
The future of telehealth has evidently resonated with investors as WELL's recent $302.5M round of investment was led by globally recognized business magnate who helped the company acquire CRH Medical, its largest acquisition to date. As the company approaches a $300M annual revenue run rate, it has managed to maintain a strong balance sheet consisting of more than $60M in cash and zero debt. Rapid growth and expansion has enabled WELL to distinguish itself as a top performer on the TSX, and as a leader in tech enabled healthcare including telemedicine, an industry projected to be a $298B market by 2028.
As WELL cements its leadership in the Telehealth industry, the company has also shown leadership in the deployment of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), a key industry interoperability programming standard for integrating and sharing healthcare data. Widespread implementation of FHIR has taken place in the U.S. and has begun to be embraced in other countries including Canada.
To date, Microsoft and three of the 'big four' technology companies (Google, Amazon and Apple) have publicly committed to FHIR and have implemented its standards across their web services. WELL is not the only company paving the way, in fact Canada has been a hotspot for health innovation yet there is evidently a long way to go.
As telehealth continues to improve, this space will be one to watch over the next decade as companies continue to set a new standard for patient care.
