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Dear Shareholders,
November was a quiet month with respect to press releases from CardioComm Solutions (CCS); however, we’ve been very busy behind the scenes developing new channels for the promotion of our devices and software.
This year we attended meetings in Dubai at the World Heart Federation (WHF) the American Heart Association (AHA) in California and, most recently, MEDICA in Germany.
During these meetings a common theme evolved among the various vendors and corporations that we spoke with. The CardioComm Solutions offering primarily sought amongst the companies with interest in CCS is our SMART Monitoring and GlobalCardio software solutions. They are interested in developing a linkage with our software to enable their devices to monitor their patients and consumers.
The CCS software is FDA-cleared, and our ECG viewer is a credible diagnostic portal through which ECGs can be carefully analyzed, annotated and reported on. Many of the software programs that are available on the market, particularly in Europe, do not offer the same capabilities as our Guava ECG viewer. They also do not have the remote capabilities that our SMART Monitoring and GlobalCardio management solutions provide.
Accordingly, we have had ongoing discussions with companies with respect to integration of their hardware devices, incorporation of our software solutions into their corporate workflow and implementation of medical call centers where workflow can be better supported by our software.
This was a specific theme underlying our meetings at Medica.
Some examples of the opportunities that we have been invited to evaluate involve companies that are developing wearable ECG sensing devices such as an ECG patch that can be worn for either prescriptive or consumer purposes. These patches involve the development of a housing unit which can be attached to a disposable electrode on the chest of an individual. The electrodes can be either a one or three lead configuration and provide ECG signals to the housing unit for periods from a few minutes to anywhere up to several days. The intended markets appear to be the shorter duration monitoring opportunities largely related to post-operative care and early discharge from hospitals, athletic monitoring during exercise, as well as those who wish to monitor themselves over specific periods of time related to stress or changes in medications. The device manufacturers represent corporations both large and small from across the globe. These companies are not investing in developing their own software solutions to manage ECG signals and are looking to us as a way to bring credibility to the manner in which their device recordings are viewed. Discussions have touched on partnering with CCS under a joint venture or development of a combined marketing initiative.
Another area where interest in CCS has been shown is in the introduction of the HeartCheck™ handheld ECG monitors into long-term care facilities in Canada and then in the US where residents of these facilities are generally transported to hospitals to have routine ECG measurements performed. Through the introduction of in-house ECG solutions, the HeartCheck™ ECG monitor and HeartCheck™ PEN coupled with SMART Monitoring, and in some instances our Global Cardio software, will provide a point of care capacity for ECG readings of these individuals. The remote monitoring medical call centre capacity will permit any physician associated with those organizations to read the ECGs rapidly and report back.
Regarding high-volume screening and medical monitoring, we continue to work with large medical call centers, such as Philips, in order to offer streamlined workflow solutions to enhance through put of ECGs while maintaining control on infrastructure-related costs. We are also evaluating new large screening program initiatives, as we had done with the Heart and Stroke Foundation. One such organization with interest is the WHF. Meetings with that organization were started at the WHF meeting in Dubai earlier this year, with the latest round occurring at the AHA last month. The WHF is interested in developing a plan to reduce deaths by 25% by the year 2025 from disorders and diseases that are not related to communicable diseases. This means that they are focusing their death prevention strategy on those deaths related to cancer and cardiac disease. In this regard, CCS has been proposing to the executive of the WHF development of a global screening program for the detection of atrial fibrillation (AF). It is well-known that individuals with (AF) have a minimum of 1 in 4 chance of having a stroke. Approximately one third of those individuals who have a stroke will die. Another one third of the individuals will be debilitated while the last third will recover largely unencumbered. Anyone who survives an initial stroke is at risk for a second stroke. Accordingly, identification of any patients or individuals with AF would lead to the implementation of effective therapies for the prevention of non-hemorrhagic-based stroke events. It is estimated that approximately 70% of those individuals who would have a stroke would have been prevented from having a stroke if they had been placed in appropriate therapies. The traditional therapy is warfarin however there are new products on the market being produced by large pharmaceutical companies that can prevent such risk from stroke.
Additionally, CardioComm Solutions was present at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress (CCC) in Toronto this fall. We were provided with ample space and signage within the booth of a presenting pharmaceutical company. This provided us with the opportunity to promote awareness of the technologies available for AF detection as well as the promotion of the HeartCheck™ PEN.
Our Q3 financials were also released recently, and this has understandably resulted in quite a few calls to my office. The posted loss largely represents a delay in going to market with the HeartCheck™ PEN of approximately 2 months. This was related largely to delays in approvals for the sale of the PEN in Canada and continued anticipation for the CE mark to enable European sales. The distribution network for the HeartCheck™ PEN continues to show strong signs of support. Distributors located across the globe, who have the HeartCheck™ PEN in their hands, are actively evaluating the product internally, as well as with their cardiology stakeholders within their geographical areas of interest. They have been provided a three-month evaluation period for the PEN as well as the SMART Monitoring service and we continue to look forward to when we can sign definitive distributor agreements with these organizations.
Our HeartCheck™ PEN stakeholder group is also busy working with us providing ECGs for regular physician reviews. The stakeholder group is very important to us as we continue to determine whether there are any areas we should streamline or enhance based on real world use cases. So far the largest issue that we have found is a request for a PEN for use with an Apple-based computer, with which we are not yet compatible. We anticipate release of testimonials for use of the product shortly which would reflect the positive response of the market to the release of not only the PEN but also our service.
As a final note, the go to market strategy is the most important component of the release of our HeartCheck™ PEN product. In this regard, we have been very careful in deliberate releases of the product through various channels to determine our market segments of interest. Indeed, the larger distribution channels in North America are looking at what the best distribution channel may be.
As we move through December we anticipate a quiet month with a potential for press releases to be made. Year-end tax loss sell offs may continue to put pressure on the stock price and this may be the case into the early part of January 2013.
We continue to work towards our goal of placing CardioComm Solutions as the preferred ECG management solutions provider globally through the introduction of disruptive device and software technologies.
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email us at investorrelations@cardiocommsolutions.com.
Yours very truly,
Etienne Grima
This release may contain certain forward-looking statements with respect to the financial condition, results of operations and business of CardioComm Solutions and certain of the plans and objectives of CardioComm Solutions with respect to these items. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainty because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future and there are many factors that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.
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