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 testing is this emerging technology it is one of the fastest growing businesses it's going from about a 25 billion dollar business at the beginning of this decade to being about a 90 billion dollar business at the end of this decade [Music] hello and welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn De Guzman with investing News Network Our Guest today is Hector Bremner CEO of avicore health and we're discussing Innovations in healthcare technology hello Hector Hi Marilyn how are you good good to have

you here thank you so let's start off with an overview of avicore health and your value proposition evercore health is a innovator in the pharmacy practice where we're bringing Technologies into the Community Pharmacy to support their evolution into a more service-based healthcare service and and so what's exciting is globally the pharmacy business is a 1.6 trillion dollar business in Canada alone it's over 60 billion and it's going through this powerful transition where they're

going away from just simply Distributing medications for example where you just simply pick up your prescription to you receiving many more services including minor ailment supports like you can get in Alberta and Ontario prescription renewals but most importantly chronic disease screening and management and so we're providing them the tools to help them transition into this exciting New Era so can you talk a bit more about that technology that you're providing so it's just to give us uh our audience a bit of

an overview of that so our primary offering is Health tab healthtab is a turnkey solution for the pharmacy to be able to offer point of care testing and so we partnered with Abbott a couple years ago to be able to integrate their instruments into the system we provide a cloud-based fully integrated system where the data in real time is taken from the instrument and of course the test is occurring right there on site the data goes from the instrument immediately puts it through some clinical evaluation in the sense

that it's looking at the results in some ways that are specific to the patient and then what it does is it produces the result for the patient the healthcare provider and even researchers on the back end in real time and why this matters is that healthtab is now ensuring that people can take more control of their health journey and get better health outcomes because because the reality is is that while the dominant story in the news over the last you know not just during covet but of course after covet has been

the fact that Healthcare is usual disease care is really is what we call it um the the which is to say that we are focused solely on when the incident happens when the heart attack happens when the stroke happens much of this is preventable if you can get to the patient early if you can a effectively communicate what the risks are develop a plan that's specific to them and then keep them on and so uh there's a bunch of things happening uh right now from patients knowing more and demanding

more service to there being limitations of the uh hospital and physician um Universe being able to serve the demand technology making it easier and of course government responding with policy changes that make it possible all this is coming together as we speak and it's a very exciting time and it means that healthtab has a very bright future incredible right and preventative health care is definitely a part of that is patient the whole Paradigm around patient-centered care right and multidisciplinary approach to

Patient Care what role do you see pharmacists or pharmacies play in in this whole paradigm yeah it's an interesting question because I think one of the great many challenges in my background is is government as well I I had a chance to work in the BC government as an advisor to Cabinet ministers and then also was elected myself and having worked around Public Health Care issues from a government point of view it is always been frustrating that the healthcare system is is sort of always built to

spend more than it has so you can increase funding but it's always going to be in a deficit it's just in the inherent nature of the way that it's set up and internally for some time people have known the change needs to happen and what change means is not simply just dumping more money into the system status quo but really looking at Innovation and Innovation doesn't always mean technology sometimes it means allowing people on the healthcare team and there's a lot of the people that are

a part of those teams to do more in their role and one of the people more most critical in all of this has been the pharmacist the pharmacist is traditionally medically trained they essentially go to not essentially but they go to medical school the the difference between a physician and a pharmacist is that they they don't really do pharmacist doesn't do the practicum work and then doesn't do the Hands-On work they they stay focused on the medications and this is critical because they are the experts they know

the medications they obviously have a long-term relationship with the patient they often see the patient more regularly than even the physician does many people don't have a family physician and they don't see the same doctor every time so the doctor doesn't even know they're seeing you fresh for the first time where your pharmacist has seen you for 20 years and they know who you are and so this person the pharmacist has been grossly underutilized due to the fact that their license hasn't allowed them to do much

more than simply provide you some very general advice around the medication and simply serve you in that moment in a retail sense but wisely um after many years and much studying of all this and certainly the pandemic was the Breakthrough moment where the pharmacist was the front line of care for many of us and they really filled major gaps they proved that they could do this work safely and effectively and that it would be a valuable efficiency added to the system is to be able to have the community pharmacist

which is readily available to people you can walk in the door and get Care on demand and you have these medical professionals that are there and they have the expertise to let them do the work that they know how to do and so they're going to be able to shoulder some of some of the load that is really breaking the back of the general practice which is to say the family doctor more and more people as I mentioned don't have a family doctor and the family doctors that are practicing can handle the load and so people are

ending up often in the hospital system and we don't want them in our hospitals uh hospitals are are really for should be for the most acute episodes and not for um you know anything less than that and a physician's time is really best spent doing diagnosis and direct treatment but those in between moments where the the person's health status hasn't really clinically changed very much it's sort of the maintenance moments it's the ongoing relationship of healthcare they have the pharmacist has the biggest role

to play and so um I'll close the my thought on this and pointing out to people as well you know in Canada obviously we have a publicly Health publicly funded Health Care System uh it's critical for people to understand that Healthcare dollars don't just go to Health Care they go to buildings people Post-it notes papers you know it goes to all the things that are in the building and I think often as Canadians we're disconnected from that fact that Healthcare dollars isn't just

going directly to care but there's a new model that we have to be looking at very seriously and Pharmacy is a great place to do this is where the private Enterprise can pay for the Post-it notes and the staff and the building and run the practice in exchange for a fee for the service and that means our tax dollars would be going towards health care and so this is really efficient it's really effective and it makes a lot more sense when we look at the financial constraints of being able to meet the

growing demand for health care and do so in a way that really puts dollars on the ground and gets two people doesn't get sort of just trapped up in the system that really gets to the ground and so we think the pharmacists plays a critical role in that of course they need the technology to do it and that's why we're so focused on this right and there's also that element of patient education when it comes to preventative care right so environment pharmacies I think have done um you know performed that uh role in in

some form or another so how does technology Aid maybe specifically uh you know the you're offering the technology the innovations that you you're providing how does that Aid in terms of patient education and patient taking care of their uh own health one of the fastest growing areas of healthcare technology is beyond data and and that's a big conversation and and other sort of software components so it is point of care testing point of care testing for people that haven't heard the term before just means anything that

happens outside of a lab or a hospital but but it's a very general term but it means that it could be like your eye watch uh that is monitoring certain Health Biometrics um your if you're a person with diabetes that maybe you wear a glucose meter or you're pricking your finger regularly that's that's point of care um but being able to do limited Diagnostics and I say limited diagnosis because I want to be very clear that point of care testing is a long ways away from being able to replace a lab

you know in companies in the past and we often um are not um shy about uh the questions about companies like thranos thranosa of course became very controversial they tried to claim that they could develop a machine that was going to replace a lap we're very clear that we think that the role of Pharmacy and point of care testing is about screening um it's about support so we're not seeing um we're not trying to make claims that the lab is going to go away but why that matters is that the lab also is

capacitized that it has limitations and so the point of care has to happen you have to be able to uh take the pressure off the lab but you also have to consider a really alarming statistics around the fact that when a physician gives an individual a wreck for a lab result so they've given them the so-called prescription to go to the lab and get lab work done the likelihood of an individual using that lab wreck is shockingly low that they will not go to the lab and so there's a bunch of different factors

that come into play into that people are busy you know if you've gone through the whole Lab experience once and you've had a lot of time burnt in your day and all the running around you might not do it again you know if it's not absolutely critical you you know and obviously chronic disease is a slow rolling crisis so it's it's not something that people until it's very late uh really start to take aggressive action on and so point of care testing is this emerging technology it is one of the fastest

growing businesses is going from about a 25 billion dollar business at the beginning of this decade to being about a 90 billion dollar business at the end of this decade and so what it means is if you can take technology and as we do that is off the shelf that is widely used loved and respected um tons of research around it how effective it is and how um Healthcare professionals trust the results we're able to take them out of the small labs and and community base Physicians offices and move it into the

pharmacy very different setting for the machine but by networking them and connecting them to our technology making them easier to use making the results and interpretation much easier both for the patient and for the practitioner to get back to your the essence of your question is that that simple conversation being able to get information on demand that you can trust is the first step to that person's health journey and there are so many testimonials that we've seen come through over the past year and a half

where um people who have been really missed by the Healthcare System I'm talking about people that have full-blown diabetes for example people are on the verge of a major heart attack or stroke a major health event uh and discovering it there for the first time and they didn't have to beg anyone to to give them a lab record they didn't have to you know wait hours in line for a doctor's appointment they were asked they were asked by their pharmacist would you like to have the service doesn't cost you anything sit

down you have a consultation the test is conducted and now this information is in the patient's hands they get to keep their information of course they have their own login they get to use that data as they see fit but also pharmacists have also not really had access to this type of information about their patients they've they've had a lot of historical information about their patients maybe they've known what prescriptions they've picked up in the past they don't really know about how

their health is today and so this is also really welcomed by the pharmacists as they are saying now we can use our expertise and our skills and be able to make decisions along with the patient that's right for them keep them on track keep them engaged a therapy adherence is a is a term in the drug making world is is a real challenge just because you are able to identify a patient that needs your medication keeping them on it and so they have the best outcome is is very difficult because people fall off

and so that engagement in that relationship with technology bridging that Gap and that sharing of the information means that it's much more personal for everyone it's much more tangible it's realistic and it's actionable and what we're seeing is people going from being um in advanced stages for example of diabetes we've seen people with blood glucose levels that are practically off the charts like 11 just as high as 17 for for people that don't know you should be below six

um after they have been identified and they've been working with their Pharmacists and regularly being checked with healthcab they are able to actually get down into those managed levels of around the thick six and a half so that's huge it means a lot um your likelihood of certain cancers heart attack stroke is dramatically reduced at that level and that's good for all of us right I wonder if you could provide your insights on where do you see the gaps are in terms of where the government

um can support growth of health care or you know companies such as yourself or like Innovative companies that are providing this sort of measures that can close those gaps in health in our Health Care system like what are your thoughts on that and where the you know what are you looking for the government to provide more well as we sit here today and we're having this conversation the federal government of Canada just launched its uh most recent budget budget 2023 uh in there is quite a bit of new spending

including a new uh 10-year Healthcare funding deal that is being finalized with the provinces um we're hopeful um and when I say we I mean people that are both serving Pharmacy and Pharmacy itself um there's a great deal of advocacy being done behind the scenes uh you know in every channel they could possibly use um in terms of advocating to government and again this is the pharmacy sector is doing a lot of really great work to say hey we're here we should be playing a bigger role um we

have information now thanks to healthtab that can show you that in real time that we're having a real impact on patients lives and that the net result for government would be an investment in Pharmacy to do this work more of this work directly reimbursing them at proper levels for this work because the cost of Simply seeing that patient every 90 days and doing that relatively low cost test compared to the cost of what a heart attack or a stroke costs the system uh is an exponential difference so I think

government now is starting to listen I think you know we're we're starting to see good movement several provinces have announced already that they are willing to change the scope of practice in their particular jurisdictions in some limited cases there's some funding for the for the pharmacy but really this new deal with the federal government was really critical in putting the new dollars um that are so desperately needed so we're bullish and very hopeful that as part of these new dollars that some of it will

be going to Pharmacy I think what government needs to be doing is directly reimburse seeing the pharmacist for screening of diabetes and heart disease and kidney disease and then having ongoing funding for them to be able to do the work with the patient once they've been identified or been screened to keep them on track because when we invest or I should say we're investing in heart attacks and strokes when we're not investing in preventative care and so this is something that uh was a hard

sell for government up until relatively recently but I think that given the post-pandemic realities of where we're at um where a lot of money was spent during that time economies have been disrupted where as we sit here today you know the discussion is you know will there be a recession won't there be a recession but it won't really matter recession or not Health Care spending is the one recession-proof area and government knows this it's the one area where the the spending demands are going

to continue to increase the reality is as we live longer we have more complex care needs is the term is used which means um we have more chronic diseases uh you know 50 percent of Canadians over 20 have at least one chronic disease one-third of Canadians are either pre-diabetic or diabetic so these numbers are not insignificant and these are not things like a you know granted it's not as uh from a news perspective in the human proclivity to need everything to be a crisis you know it we we love things like pandemics

or some sort of new you know we love names like bird flu or whatever but I mean the reality is uh it is what is the biggest risk to all of us is the acquired chronic illnesses that are impacting your family my family everybody knows somebody that is struggling and and living with the results of the fact that uh chronic diseases is sneaking up on us and there's a lot of factors that drive it and the pharmacists can help you with that they can um drive you towards mental health supports because we know that there's a

direct correlation between stress and and depression uh and you know lifestyle actions that that lead to other chronic diseases um they can get you support if you are diagnosed um they could get you on track with the right Healthcare professionals and lead you as a part of that team to the right Care at the right time and the right place and so all of this is about making Health Care smarter uh that you know just because you have a hammer not everything is a nail so you know people are we're not just statistics each and

every one of us were were unique um and we know that um when we're engaged and we're treated in a truly human way which I think is something the pharmacist is really set up to do well is when we're treated on this one-to-one level we see a dramatic increase and the comment was made to me by um our our own customers that they're they're very excited that when a patient experiences Health tab for the first time they were like they bring like that patient brings like five people with

them back the next time because they're so excited by the that they were able to receive this service and that it even exists and so uh it just proves to us and it inspires us and it really energizes us to know that um there is a gap in collaboration with the pharmacy we can help fill it and um it's timely it's ready it's now and we think that everything is going in the right direction uh to kind of conclude the point here is that um policies going in the right direction we're optimistic that the new funding

um announcements uh are are coming in the relatively near future we're very bullish on that and we know um by Major announcements by almost every major Pharmacy chain in Canada the US and globally they're all really embracing this new world of services they're making major Investments they're entirely shifting their business models they're all running head first towards services so we think we're in the right space and that um it's unfortunately took a pandemic for people to realize how critical the

pharmacy could be but we're here now and um you know I think uh everybody's on the right track that's great so uh what can investors expect from every core health for 2023 well we're going to see uh steady growth we think throughout the balance of this year demand is going to ramp up significantly as we grow the number of locations more Pharmacy groups coming on board we obviously are pushing towards becoming a global platform we don't just view ourselves as although we're proudly

Canadian as a company this in Canada has been a great place to innovate and incubate we do see really exciting markets opening up in front of us on the international stage so throughout the balance of this year you're going to see more growth last year we had a fantastic year with over two million dollars in Revenue this year we anticipate to to well exceed that we also um just recently had announced that we're currently at over 532 locations that have had their systems deployed and those are all coming on online now and

we're also very excited that um we are deploying 100 ID Nows which is a new device for us to deploy at scale um which is to say I've talked a lot about chronic disease and that's done with a specific machine called the affinian 2 from Abbott but uh we're deploying another Avid device which does virological testing which is a confirmed molecular test on site so this means that patients can be strep tested for strep infections in real time in the pharmacy and people that um you know can first of all can have

direct intervention and get the right medication that they need at that moment but there's a flip side to that and um again you know government has been very concerned for a lot of years and medical professionals have been concerned for a lot of years is the overuse of antibiotics so it's also an opportunity to show people because we've all had this interaction I you know I go to the doctor I'm experiencing something they just give you antibiotics and so the nice thing is the pharmacist can say

well no we've confirmed that it's it's very logical it's not it's bacterial so you you know we can steer people away from the overuse of antibiotics which is a good thing for all of us um get them the right medication at the right time and the right service at the right time so um very excited by that so um that's another thing that I think the investment Community can expect from us is um diversification of our services more Partners um greater growth and expansion and um you know us continuing to March down

our path of being the most dominant player in point of care testing from a networked point of view in Community Pharmacy right lots of um great and exciting things ahead for the company thank you for uh sharing your insights today Hector thank you well it's been my pleasure thanks and thank you for watching everyone join us again next time for another engaging conversation on CEO insights [Music] foreign