Imagine a world where premium, one-on-one healthcare no longer requires you to get in your car or on a bus then sit in a waiting room, seemingly endlessly, until you got to see a doctor. Well, back in March, we reintroduced our Stockhouse investor audience to a company, and its CEO, Founder & President, that was truly revolutionizing the digital and virtual healthcare space with a proven virtual care platform.
Accelerating virtual care and remote patient monitoring solutions, Cloud DX Inc. (CDX) (TSX-V.CDX, OTC: CDXFF, Forum) says it’s “on a mission to make healthcare better for everyone”. Simply put, Cloud DX is a one-of-a-kind digital and virtual healthcare platform. It’s currently used by private and public hospitals, along with healthcare organizations across North America. The ingenious platform – or “Virtual Care as a Platform (VCaaP) – is designed to provide patient remote monitoring, enable aging in place, and delivering hospital quality post-surgical care. In turn, this helps to reduce the need for hospitalization and managing the costs of healthcare delivery through more efficient use of resources.
The company’s Connected Health remote patient monitoring platform is used by healthcare enterprises and care teams across North America to virtually manage chronic disease, enable aging in place, and deliver hospital-quality post-surgical care in the home. Cloud DX’s partners achieve better healthcare and patient outcomes, reduce the need for hospitalization or re-admission, and reduce healthcare delivery costs through more efficient use of resources.
In the News
On May 31st, Cloud DX announced Q1 2022 results; positive numbers that company shareholders and potential investors should pay keen attention to.
Financial Highlights:
- Total Revenue of $337,263 – an increase of 11.4% over Q1 2021.
- Operating Expenses increased 25.7% versus Q1 2021 due to increased staff size as well as increased sales, marketing, and operations expenses as we scale up.
- The Company signed 12 new commercial contracts and saw 2 provincial/territorial contract extensions in the quarter, exceeding the total number of contracts/extensions signed in all of 2021.
Earlier in May, the company signed on its third paramedical service provider to date –Peterborough County (Ontario) Paramedics. Cloud DX said it will support the Peterborough County / City Community Paramedic team with its Connected Health™ solution for remote patient monitoring (RPM). Of note, paramedicine providers using RPM improve response rates, reduce hospital admissions, and improve community health.
Anthony Kaul, COO and co-founder at Cloud DX, shared what this means for the industry:
“Cloud DX powers patient monitoring in hospitals and clinics across North America. Now, Peterborough County brings Cloud DX into the community. Using our Connected Health™ solution, Peterborough Paramedic teams will improve the lives of community members: from supporting those with chronic conditions, conducting in-person hospital discharge follow-ups after, checking on those managing COVID at home, or supporting individuals awaiting a bed in long-term care.”
Other noteworthy news from late March – Cloud DX inking a deal for two new contracts with U.S. primary care clinics.
The Connected Health Kit: Telemedicine Right from the App!
What is telemedicine all about and how does it really work. Well, Cloud DX’s proprietary app allows any patient to:
- Speak to a licensed clinician by text or video instantly
- Track vital signs with easy-to-use FDA-cleared devices
- Enables your online clinician to see the patient’s vital signs in real-time during the online consultation
- “The most powerful, affordable connected health service available.”
From the CEO
Founder, President & CEO, Robert Kaul, has nearly 30 years of experience in sales, marketing, operations, and a successful track record leading early-stage technology companies, including Luna Technologies International Inc (where he served as Director of Operations) and ARA Safety Inc. (where he was COO). Mr. Kaul was the founder and CEO of Cloud Diagnostics LLC – a digital health distribution company launched in 2009. Within nine months Cloud Diagnostics exited with an asset sale to Biosign Technologies Inc. I served as Executive VP of Biosign from 2010-2011, and CEO from 2012 to 2014.
In conversation with The Market Herald Editorial, Mr. Kaul offered a detailed account of Cloud DX’s unique business model geared towards long-term growth.
TMH: To start off with and for those who may be unaware of Cloud DX, can you tell us a bit about yourself, the company, and what exactly it does?
RK: I am a serial entrepreneur. I am a Canadian citizen, but I live in New York City where we have our US headquarters. This is my sixth start-up and Cloud DX has been in business now since 2014.
Cloud DX is a Health Canada licensed, FDA-registered medical device manufacturer and software developer that offers a complete “end-to-end” virtual healthcare platform called Cloud DX Connected Health™. Cloud DX offers a very comprehensive remote patient monitoring solution that includes a kit of devices, the Cloud DX Connected Health kit. The kit is prescribed by physicians, is sent home with patients, and is used in the home by patients to monitor their health, their vital signs, symptoms, fill out surveys, even potentially take photos of surgical incisions and wounds that the surgeon can then review to make sure that wounds are healing properly. This is a system that’s garnered 96 to 97% patient satisfaction across hundreds and hundreds of patients across many, many months and in previous studies as well has received up to 100% patient satisfaction.
Typical Cloud DX customers include large hospitals and provincial health authorities in Canada, and physician practices and hospitals in the United States.
Our partners achieve better healthcare and patient outcomes, reduce the need for hospitalization or re-admission, and reduce healthcare delivery costs through more efficient use of resources.
We’re publicly traded on the TSXV. We’re also exchange-available in the OTCQB in the US.
TMH: You’ve just signed a deal with your third paramedical service provider in Peterborough Ontario. Can you unwrap the benefits of this contract and some of the other significant contracts over the past while e.g., Equitable Life?
RK: We just signed our FOURTH Paramedical Service Provider contract, this most recent one also in Ontario County. These are very exciting partnerships and we’re very proud to be servicing Ontario paramedic services who are bringing this new level of virtual care and remote patient monitoring to populations across Ontario.
The funding for these programs was announced in Oct. of 2021 and the Ontario government at the time announced up to $80 million in new funding for community-based paramedic units to offer remote monitoring across the province. What’s really exciting is the paramedic services now are very much on board and there are 33 counties across Ontario that have access to this funding, so we anticipate additional growth in this area in the next few months for 2022.
The real purpose of this particular type of remote monitoring is to help folks stay in their homes as long as possible. Older folks who have maybe one or more chronic illnesses, these are folks who would otherwise be looking at staying in a long-term care facility or nursing home, and for multiple reasons that is not the best possible outcome for many patients.
Our technology will play a vital role in providing medical support to clients when they need it the most and in improving their health outcomes and quality of life. Bringing RPM into the community improves user lifestyles, promotes aging in place, and adds more dignity to care.
EQUITABLE LIFE: This is a very important new type of customer, a new type of platform for delivery of care because up until this announcement in general, virtual care was delivered by healthcare systems, by doctors and by hospitals. Equitable Life to our knowledge is the first mutual insurance company to offer actual virtual care to all of the members in their critical illness insurance business. So Equitable itself is paying Cloud DX to deliver care for free to their users, to their critical injury clients. If you make a critical injury claim now at Equitable Life, you not only get a check, but you also get care from Cloud DX.
This proves in my opinion, that the concept of virtual care is now transforming more than just healthcare. It’s transforming insurance, it’s transforming the workplace, and we’re on the absolute forefront as leaders of that change.
The reason why Equitable has decided to partner with Cloud DX to improve outcomes for their members is because of the proof that we’ve published over the last several years that Connected Health and remote patient monitoring, when deployed correctly, decreases patient pain threshold, or reported pain; increases patient satisfaction; reduces the number of E.R. visits; reduces the number of hospitalizations likely for that patient. So, this is a case of Equitable not only wanting to do the best by their patients but also genuinely working to reduce the impact of those critical illnesses for their patients.
TMH: The Medtronic deal back in February was a real gamechanger for the company. How so and what does it mean long-term for Cloud DX moving forward?
RK: The Medtronic, Canada partnership gives us tremendous reach and additional distribution horsepower to really grow quickly in the next 12 to 18 months.
The very first hospital system under that new contract with Medtronic Canada signed up with us. St. Mary’s Hospital in our own hometown of Kitchener Ontario is deploying and using Cloud DX systems for Connected Health, in particular for pulmonary rehab. although other use cases are planned at St. Mary’s, and we expect more and more new Medtronic business to roll out of course, as that contract matures.
This partnership with Medtronic Canada is an ideal fit; both our companies are taking the lead in our commitments to innovating and creating improved healthcare delivery. This collaboration means remote care will be widely available across Canada. This cutting-edge level of care can directly impact over 1 million Canadians with life-changing support and truly modern healthcare solutions. Our Connected HealthTM virtual care platform is preferred by clinicians and has received 100% patient satisfaction scores in multiple studies; we have a proven track record of superior deployment and compliance and demonstrated unsurpassed expertise in the RPM sector space. The entire Cloud DX team is now ready to live up to being recognized and selected by such a leader in the medical technology industry as Medtronic.
TMH: You recently announced Fiscal 2021 financial results. Can you break down some of the numbers for our investor audience?
RK: We are celebrating a record first quarter at Cloud DX. Recognized revenues for the company were up 11% versus Q1 of 2021. Both product and service revenues increased. That’s not quite the whole story though, because in fact many of our contracts that we closed in Q1 of 2022 closed very close to the end of the quarter which means that in fact a lot of those contracts were fulfilled in Q2. So additional revenues signed in the quarter were actually going to be recognized later in the year.
Our revenue from subscriptions increased by 32%. Our revenue from product, which is primarily Connected Health kits increased by 62%. And even our revenue from professional services, which tends to be things like customizations we do for our clients increased by 11.4%. So, we’re very excited to see this trend and we’re hopeful this trend will continue all the way through 2022 as the whole company begins to really hit its stride moving forward with more and more sales.
TMH: Can you update us on the progress of ‘The Connected Health Kit’ platform? Can you tell us about it in detail and what this means for the company and for potential shareholders moving forward?
RK: Cloud DX has seen access to available patients suited to its remote patient monitoring products increase due to the execution of 12 contracts over the course of 2021. In particular, contracts with Lung Health Ontario, Hamilton Health Sciences, University of Waterloo and 8 US clinics with partner Maxwell Telecare showed accelerating growth in the period.
On December 1, 2021, the Company announced an exclusive contract with Medtronic Canada, under which that company (a subsidiary of Medtronic PLC (NYSE:MDT)) agreed to integrate Cloud DX Connected Health into all its main lines of business in Canada. Medtronic stated that they serve up to 1,000,000 patients in Canada annually.
TMH: Heath and biotech stocks have been up & down as of late. Can you tell our investor audience what kind of financial verticals they can expect from Cloud DX moving forward?
RK: The reality is that in our entire sector, the amount of trading in stock and shares in public Canadian health IT companies has dramatically dropped since 2021. We attribute this primarily to just sheer macroeconomic situations. I think that the reality is that many people are just not trading stocks right now. But for those who do, we do see a genuine increase in Cloud DX in the last little while. And we believe that the best way to improve this situation, both on the point of view and the share price point of view, is to continue doing our jobs, to continue having record quarters, to continue signing contracts, taking care of patients, getting those extremely high satisfaction numbers and continue to grow our company as fast as we can.
We do see this space growing very rapidly. Published studies and published marketing research reports show an increase in both access to and increase satisfaction with virtual care across North America.
Cloud DX has been the recipient of millions of dollars in non-dilutive funding, which really benefits investors because it helps pay for R&D without having to dilute our investors. So, announcements in that area are something else that we can really look forward to.
TMH: Tell us about the problems you solve in the connected healthcare space?
RK: Cloud DX is focused on offering the best possible virtual care experience. By manufacturing proprietary vital sign devices, the Company can constantly improve the patient-user experience (UX), making virtual care more engaging for those who need it most.
By collecting unique and accurate remote data, clinicians have more information to use in therapeutic decision-making, while streamlining workflow with automated monitoring.
Using advanced data science techniques, patterns are identified in patient-generated data that indicate the probability of poorer health outcomes, enabling rapid intervention and saving lives. By managing the full patient-to-provider experience costs can be reduced with improved ROI for healthcare payers including Canadian provinces, territories, and US insurance providers.
TMH: Robert, what are the company’s near-term objectives?
RK: A few points:
- scaling partnerships and deployments through them (e.g., Medtronic)
- achieving 10k onboarded patients this year (stated goal last year)
- commercializing innovations from Cloud XR department
TMH: How are you building your company in this competitive virtual healthcare space?
RK: We are one of the most innovative companies in North America. We have a very strong and innovative program that delivers new types of medical devices, new types of virtual care features and that’s the reason giant companies like Medtronic Canada chose to partner with us. So, we are absolute leaders in innovation and you’re going to continue to see us leading from the front, with new software and new hardware to improve care. That’s the first thing. The second
thing is astonishing customer service and satisfaction. We’ve recently announced two completely separate third-party surveys that were done recently in Canada that show each show over 95% customer satisfaction and patient satisfaction using Cloud DX, Connected Health. That’s remarkable to have over 95% patient satisfaction on multiple announced surveys means our patients and customers absolutely love us. That’s a key differentiator and the third differentiator is our partnerships.
TMH: Cloud DX is the co-winner of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, a 2021 Edison Award winner, a Fast Company “World Changing Idea” finalist, and was named a “New Innovator 2022” by Canadian Business magazine. Tell us about these well-deserved kudos?
RK: We’re very proud of these awards. Cloud Dx has earned many, many awards for innovation over the years. We’re probably one of the most awarded companies in this sector, if not the most. We’re excited because of two reasons. Many of these awards are very competitive, so they are a very much genuine stamp of approval and credibility because they’ve been awarded after very careful vetting. So, it really lifts Cloud DX up is an absolute leader in innovation, with many awards. This is an exception but many of these awards that we’ve earned, like the XPR award, the NCI awards, and so on also come with non-diluted funding and that, of course, should make investors very happy.
TMH: Simply put, what’s the overall narrative about Cloud DX investors should know about?
RK: We’re positioned as not only an innovation leader, as an intellectual property leader, as a customer service leader but as the best possible partner for those forward-looking companies. So, we want investors to know that as an investment Cloud DX’s future proof, we’re de-risking with these wonderful partnerships and supporting us and growing with us is potentially a great investment.
TMH: If there’s anything else you’d like to add, or think is important, please feel free to elaborate?
RK: Cloud XR. We’ve actually had what we call a metaverse project in the works for six years and so what our metaverse platform allows clinicians, doctors, and nurses to do is collaborate on the care of a patient, wearing a HoloLens headset from Microsoft or using an iPad with the Apple AR kit on there and interacting with multiple clinicians and patients in a virtual space in a way that they’re very comfortable with this expands the reach of virtual care in a whole brand new way.
The reason investors should care about it though, it proves that Cloud DX technology is future-proof. Our hospital customers don’t have to worry about trying to replace Cloud DX technology in five or six years with some other new thing. Cause we are the new thing, we’re the ones bringing the future to the table and that actually de-risks purchasing Cloud DX for our customers.
Meet the Team
The Investment Opportunity
The COVID-19 pandemic unequivocally demonstrated that reliable virtual healthcare is a global necessity of the highest order. The Cloud DX Connected Health platform meets and exceeds this existential need by offering convenient mobile apps for patients, a secure online clinician portal, automated symptom tracking, notification of the appearance of symptoms, secure video visits for Telemedicine, tools for improving compliance, and EMR integration of patient reports.
Savvy investors, both retail and institutional, are focussing on one of the global marketplace’s most dynamic, fastest-growing sectors – digital and virtual health care.
Today, high-quality telemedicine is a $250 billion annual marketplace generating recurring revenue demonstrated by continuing contract receipts that show significant growth year-over-year. Cloud DX is at the forefront of this digital revolution creating precision vital sign monitoring equipment, software, and mobile apps that cost less…and do more.
Stockhouse Video Q&A Interview with CEO, Founder & President Robert Kaul – Mar 9, 2022
Click image to play video
For more information, visit www.clouddx.com.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by The Market Herald Canada.
