ALR Technologies' Letter to Shareholders
RICHMOND, VA--(Marketwired - May 21, 2014) - ALR Technologies (OTCBB: ALRT), a medical device company providing remote monitoring and care facilitation for patients with chronic diseases, today delivered the following letter to its shareholders.
Dear Shareholders:
First, thank you for your continuing support for our company. It is an exciting time at ALRT and, as we have done in the past, I will continue to send out occasional updates on our progress with the intention of keeping you and the general public informed about recent developments and the prospects for our company's success.
Let me first provide a reminder about what our unique product is, and what it does. The market is crowded with "apps" and other technologies meant to help patients organize their data and provide it to their physicians. Our technology is not an "app," it is an FDA-cleared platform that is used by our trained team to monitor measureable blood glucose data and to notify physicians or caregivers when there are adverse trends in the data. Our product is predicated on our understanding that physicians are too busy to monitor data sent by an "app," or to logon to multiple sites and look for adverse trends in patient data. Therefore, what we offer is a service that can help physicians and payers manage larger numbers of patients more efficiently and effectively.
About a year ago, we decided upon a go-to-market strategy in the U.S. that targets payers, including self-insured employers and health plans. Because our Health-e-Connect system has the potential to assist payers in managing the burgeoning costs of treating diabetes, we are confident that a market exists for a cost-effective remote monitoring system for diabetes. Since the middle of last year, we have been in discussions with a number of payers and we hope that we will be able to announce projects with these payers in the near term.
We are actively pursuing horizontal and vertical growth opportunities by presenting the Health-e-Connect System in many possible sales channels. Besides payers, we also feel that our system may be attractive to Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and other medical groups who have incentives for effectively managing chronic disease. As with payers, we have been in discussions with ACOs and we hope we will be in a position to announce joint projects in the near future.
In addition to payers and medical groups, we feel that the Health-e-Connect system can be an effective tool in the home health setting, as well as in skilled nursing facilities. For this market segment, we also have been in lengthy discussions with firms who know this market well. Our system has the potential to assist elderly patients stay in their homes or might prevent a nursing home patient from enduring a hospitalization.
Another U.S. market showing potential for ALRT is Medicaid. There is a distinct trend toward the reimbursement of remote monitoring services in Medicaid. While the state laws and regulations are complex, we have launched an initiative to familiarize state Medicaid directors with our technology and to explore market opportunities in this government space.
We also see strong growth potential in international markets. Developing economies are seeing exploding rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Countries with public healthcare systems in particular are struggling to maintain a level of quality care, as physicians are overwhelmed by the number of patients. This is especially the case in Latin America. The Health-e-Connect System is an ideal tool to help these public healthcare systems to manage more patients more effectively without a large capital investment on the part of the governments. We are in preliminary discussions with officials in some of these developing countries, detailing the potential benefits of the Health-e-Connect System and to date the interest appears strong.
The Health-e-Connect System continues to improve and evolve. During this quarter, we announced the addition of a new feature to the System: Insulin Dose Adjustment Consultations (IDAC). With this new feature, primary care physicians can receive an electronic dosing recommendation for insulin from a specialty endocrinologist. Because our system captures actual blood glucose data from a patient's meter, an endocrinologist can formulate a dosing recommendation online by combining the patient's blood glucose data with key patient information. That recommendation can then be sent to the primary care physician electronically.
This new feature, which will allow primary care physicians to more easily manage their patients' blood glucose intensively, has attracted interest from insulin manufacturing pharmaceutical companies who have a distinct interest in assisting physicians in achieving the optimal dose of insulin for their patients. We are currently exploring possible "real world" demonstration projects for IDAC with these pharmaceutical manufacturers.
I would like to close by thanking all the investors for their continued support and believing in the promise of our technology. ALR Technologies is a medical device company, and introducing a transformational medical device product is a complex and lengthy process. Potential customers go to great lengths to "kick the tires" on our technology to make certain that clinical outcomes are likely to be improved, patient data will be protected, providers and patients will be satisfied with the use of our System, and that the benefits of the system will outweigh the costs. We have welcomed this extensive due diligence process on the part of our potential customers as we believe it has clearly set us apart from any potential competition and are optimistic that we will be in a position to see our System used more widely in the market in the near term.
Please visit our YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/ALRTechnologies and our web site http://www.alrt.com to learn more about all aspects of ALR Technologies.
Thank you again for all your support.
Yours truly,
ALR TECHNOLOGIES INC.
Sidney S Chan
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
About ALR Technologies Inc.
ALR Technologies is a medical device company providing remote monitoring and care facilitation for patients with chronic diseases. ALRT has developed the FDA-cleared and HIPAA compliant Health-e-Connect System that collects data from blood glucose meters and uploads to a secure website. Trained Facilitators use the System to effect efficiency of care among patients, clinicians and caregivers to improve outcomes and assist health plans to optimize their quality goals. Currently, the Company is focused on diabetes and will expand its services to cover other chronic diseases anchored on verifiable data.
This release contains certain "forward-looking statements" relating to ALR Technologies' business, and these statements reflect the current views of ALR Technologies with respect to future events and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions. When used, the words "estimate", "expect", "anticipate", "believe" and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. There are many factors that could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of ALR Technologies and its products to be materially different from any future results, performances or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Further management discussions of risks and uncertainties can be found in the company's quarterly filings with the Securities Exchange.
For more information, email us at
solutions@alrt.com