By The Life Science Report

Source: Streetwise Reports   06/06/2018

A technology company that develops mobile health and telemedicine platforms for community-based healthcare has raised money, made a deal that will accelerate the number of patients it adds every month, and is breaking through its hardware logjam.

Reliq Health Technologies Inc. (RHT:TSX.V; RQHTF:OTCQB) announced its recent quarterly results and followed up with a shareholder conference call that gave an overview of the challenges the company faced in the last quarter and how it overcame them. Reliq Health is primarily a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that is interested in on-boarding patients on its SaaS patient monitoring platform. The company is pursuing a first to market pathway going after chronically ill patients who need remote monitoring services. The company observed that these patients exhibit a high degree of loyalty to their providers. Dr. Lisa Crossley, Reliq Health’s CEO, led the discussion in the hour-long shareholder call on May 31, addressing the recent hardware shortage, while expanding on its recently announced implementation partner CareOneTeam.

Texas is Reliq’s primary geographic market; the company opened a sales office in March to support the region. Dr. Crossly characterized the market as “remote and rural patients with cellular-enabled monitoring devices.” Even though Reliq’s iUGO Care platform is hardware-agnostic, which means the clients can choose any number of service providers, one specific device was preferred in the market. ForaCare’s D40g 2-in-1 blood glucose and blood pressure monitoring device is SIM card-enabled and ideally suited to these applications. On the shareholder call Dr. Crossly admitted that the demand for the monitoring device devices has created a “hiccup” in the company’s short-term goals, but assured shareholders the company will catch up and hit its 2018 goals such as 35,000 patients by year-end. Reliq secured a strategic partnership with ForaCare to ensure hardware delivery of this monitoring device and followed up with a purchase order for 27,500 units. The terms of the purchase order call for delivery between the months of June through October. The large order allowed Reliq to purchase the hardware devices at a deeper discount, thus increasing the profit margin.

In-home monitoring is currently the primary service offering of Reliq’s growing client base. The patients or end-users typically have chronic diseases that need to be monitored. If monitored properly patients could avoid painful complications that could arise from their disease. The South Carolina based CareOneTeam, which originated as a clinical call center, will provide nurses and nurses’ aides to support, install and instruct iUgo Care customers with the onboarding process. With in-home care monitoring patients need that human touch to familiarize themselves with how to operate the hardware.Reliq stated it is currently adding about 2,000 patients per month, but by utilizing CareOneTeam’s manpower, it can significantly increase these monthly numbers. Dr. Crossley stated, “CareOne is a rapid growth company, much larger than Reliq, and has a multi-state foorprint. It makes the business scalable and avoids the expense of having to hire an implementation team.”

Focus is currently on the growing Texas population of complex or disadvantaged patients where Reliq’s iUGO Care platform will assist with the patient’s in-home health care. Future markets include Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Australia. Dr. Crossley commented that the sales people that joined “have experience from all over the world and even have one from Australia.” The new hires came from prestigious companies like IBM. The pipeline is estimated at 500,000 patients at various stages of closing. The company indicated that deals held up by the shortage of devices will be signed in the current quarter.

The company mentioned it had a recently secured a private placement of $10 million led by Canaccord Genuity and Gravitas Securities and added that it does not foresee a need for the additional raising of capital, as the company has revenues coming in and nearly $13 million on the books. The company stated that its general and administrative expense was CA$1.2 million per quarter. Its target gross margin is 80% and it expects to maintain that going forward and use that as a basis for its variable expenses. In the latest quarter there were extraordinary stock-based compensations expense related to the new hires to the sales force and the company doesn’t expect that trend to continue. According to the 10-Q, the company had 109,545,014 shares issued and outstanding as of March 31, 2018. According to OTC Markets, the market capitalization is approximately $120 million. The company has significant tax loss carry forwards of $14 million but has no plans on how to take advantage of it yet. At the end of the call Dr. Crossley compared the business to sailing. “In order to get where you want to go you have to tack to get the wind again.”

About Reliq Health Technologies Inc.

Reliq Health Technologies is a healthcare technology company that specializes in developing innovative software solutions for the Community Care market. Reliq’s powerful iUGO Care platform supports care coordination and community-based healthcare. The iUGO Care platform integrates wearables, sensors, voice technology and intuitive mobile apps and desktop user interfaces for patients, clinicians and healthcare administrators. iUGO Care allows complex patients to receive high quality care at home, improving health outcomes, enhancing quality of life for patients and families and reducing the cost of care delivery. iUGO Care provides real-time access to remote patient monitoring data, allowing for timely interventions by the care team to prevent costly hospital readmissions and ER visits. Reliq Health Technologies trades on the TSX Venture under the symbol RHT and on the OTCQB as RQHTF.

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( Companies Mentioned: RHT:TSX.V; RQHTF:OTCQB,
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