HealthSpace Data Systems Ltd. (HS:CSE; HSDLF:OTCMKTS), a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that works with more than 500 government agencies across North America, has extended its HSCloud Suite and My Health Department products to enable contact tracing for COVID-19. The state of Hawaii, the Okanogan County Public Health in Washington and Vancouver Island Health Authority are among the initial users of the platform.
Contact tracing is the process used by epidemiologists to retrace the steps of a person who is infected with COVID-19, to identify and track the people that person has had contact with. "These agencies then embark on a painstaking process of interviewing each of the potential contacts, calling them daily for a set period of time to monitor if they exhibit any symptoms," the company stated.
"Contact tracing is a very effective and tried-and-true tool used by epidemiologists all over the world by agencies as large as the CDC down to small rural counties. Everybody implements contact tracing in times of epidemics and outbreaks. And it's been all the more prevalent during the COVID-19 situation," HealthSpace CEO Silas Garrison told Streetwise Reports.
"Health departments need to be in touch with each patient, as well as with colleagues and family members that they came into contact with over the past week or two," Garrison explained. "They're calling those people every single day, asking specific questions about their temperature and other symptoms. They have to do this for a period of up to 14 days or more. You can just extrapolate what kind of numbers we are talking about, especially with this outbreak when you have thousands and thousands of people that public agencies are having to call, ask questions of, and catalog that information. Contact tracing done through traditional means just doesn't scale."
In HealthSpace's system, the information on the patient and their contacts is inputted into the platform and people receive a daily text alert or email message with a "secure and unique link to fill out their symptoms," Garrison said. "When something comes in that is set as a threshold flag, such as a temperature over 100 degrees, the head epidemiologist is immediately alerted, and additional appropriate measures such as recommending that they receive testing or placing in quarantine are enacted."
"The platform also allows those filling out the questionnaire to list places they have recently been—such as a supermarket—and people they have been in direct contact with, enrolling these new contacts in the daily contact tracing questionnaire. This multiplies the reach and helps control community spread more effectively. The information is securely stored inside of HealthSpace's secure HSCloud Suite platform for detailed reporting and analysis, helping these agencies make informed decisions in real-time," the company stated.
"Health departments can communicate with these people at mass scale in an instant; this platform, utilizing text message and email as the basis for communication, really streamlines the efficiency and allows health agencies more granular reporting, and in a way that they really can't do right now through traditional contact tracing methods," Garrison added.
Getting set up on the contact tracing platform has been a simple process, Garrison said. "For existing customers, onboarding time can literally be same day for most any jurisdiction across North America."
HealthSpace's mainstay platform, HSCloud Suite, was developed to enable government agencies manage their workflow and organize the large amounts of data they must maintain. "Health departments are the folks that regulate restaurants, hotels, tattoo parlors, daycares, a long list of business that they oversee, to ensure that they are operating in a safe and healthy manner, in accordance with whatever the regulatory guidelines are for a given jurisdiction," Garrison explained.
The firm's cloud-based platform encompasses the entire workflow, handling the process from application to licensing and billing to the fieldwork where an inspector will go out with an iPad app and perform the inspection, taking pictures and notating any issues so that the business can make adjustments.
More than 500 government agencies across the U.S. and Canada use HealthSpace's platform. The company was formed around 20 years ago and began migrating to a cloud-based solution around two years ago. The firm boasts of customer retention of nearly 100%.
"Now with our cloud solutions, our sales have taken an upswing, and the adoption rate is not only just growing, but the demand for our solutions is really picking up." Garrison stated.
Earlier this year, the firm closed a contract with the City of San Francisco. "That is a really big win for us in multiple ways. Not only is that the heart of Silicon Valley, and really opens up the door to a lot of recognition, but it also gives us new ground to begin selling in California. It's our first customer in California, so we've opened up a new sales territory, and there are numerous cities within the Bay Area that are now looking at our solution," Garrison said.
"Right now our sales pipeline is at over $15 million in multi-year contracts. At the end of last year, we guided that our sales pipeline was $7 million. Since then, we have closed over two-thirds of that pipeline and added more deals to increase the pipeline to $15 million. We are closing sales at a historic pace in a way that the company has never seen," Garrison added.
The firm is increasing its offerings and revenue sources by teaming up with PayPal to develop HSPay, a payment platform for its customers. "HSPay is essentially a fintech solution rolled up within our cloud platform," Garrison explained. "Our existing customers are currently collecting over $300 million a year in revenue from private businesses in order for them to operate. The majority of that money comes through paper means: check or cash. That is so cumbersome in this modern age, not only does the fee reconciliation process for the government agency necessitate bank deposits, but it's also burdensome on the private industry having to cut a paper check in an age where they'd much prefer online and mobile payments."
HealthSpace will be the merchant of record and offer the value added service to its government agency customers. "The government gets its money faster and it is saved a lot of headaches, but also private businesses are actually now incentivized and less taxed in terms of time and effort because they don't have to worry about keeping track of which invoice is paid. It's all stored in one central online solution. And our agreement with PayPal allows us to have a portion of the fees, adding a new revenue stream," Garrison said.
The firm is targeting a summer delivery date for HSPay.
HealthSpace is expanding its horizons in additional ways. "We are now focusing our energies on not just environmental health and agriculture, but other areas of government. The entire addressable market size within environmental health is well over $100 million in terms of achievable business for us. But there are other areas of government that follow the exact same pattern as environmental health departments: applications from private businesses, issuing licenses, and conducting periodic inspections, along with invoicing usually on a yearly basis. All of that is exactly tailor-made to our solution. And so now we're looking into other areas of government, where not only do they have deeper pockets, but the barriers to entry and the competitive landscape are actually a little weaker. And that gives us more power and vertical growth as we continue to expand," Garrison said.
Technical analyst Clive Maund follows the company and on April 26 wrote on CliveMaund.com, "HealthSpace Data Systems is a company that is finding itself sought after for its HSCloud suite platform for Covid-19 Contract Tracing which was only released just over two weeks ago, but is already being rolled out in Hawaii, Michigan and North Carolina with many other states expressing an interest… It is therefore not surprising to see the stock break out on huge volume on Friday on a news release… Given the current strong fundamentals which are continuing to improve, it is expected to advance swiftly in a vigorous uptrend… It could easily run up to the early 2018 highs at C$0.27 and could perhaps continue higher… Healthspace is rated an immediate buy here for a short and medium-term timeframe."
HealthSpace has about 152 million shares outstanding and around 176 million fully diluted. Just over 10% of the company is owned by management officers, directors and insiders. The company's market cap is approximately CA$12.17 million.
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CliveMaund.com
Clive Maund does not own shares of HealthSpace Data Systems, and neither he nor his company has a financial relationship with the company.
