Authentidate: Significant Opportunities for Revenue Growth
Business Overview: Authentidate provides software solutions for electronic medical records. They service this through 3 methods: Software solutions for care providers, home telehealth devices, and patient discharge solutions.
Business Background: Authentidate has been public since 1992, originally traded as Bitwise Designs. Since then, the business has undergone many changes, and is now primarily in the healthcare arena.
Market Opportunity: $1.2B is flowing into electronic medical records (VP Biden announced this in August). Authentidate's entire business is based on electronic medical records and the numerous ways in which businesses are going to be needed to process them. In addition, telehealth monitoring is by many studies, expected to grow into a $12B industry by 2012. Their third solution, patient discharge, is the solution to a problem that has been experienced by many people in the industry, for quite a long time, however requires the electronic medical records to make it feasible, which we are now seeing.
Authentidate's Business Offerings:
- Inscrybe – All forms, processes, and workflow with paper, are made electronic. Healthcare offices can be more efficient, increasing full time employee throughput by 50%. Document cycle times reduce from 22 days to 7 days. Approval/billing cycle times reduced by 2 weeks. Any regulatory changes are easier to comply to as well, because everything is electronic.
- ExpressMD – A joint venture between EncounterCare Solutions, who developed the hardware, and Authentidate, who developed the software, for a home telehealth device. It will take your vitals and relay the information to your healthcare provider. For patients with chronic conditions, this is a very important aspect. As we see more government programs push for increased healthcare coverage, doctors will see that they have to care for 3-4 times the number of patients in certain areas, and a device like this is the only way to really meet the needs of all the patients. This is a 50/50 joint venture. Cyntrist is the current distributor/reseller signed up.
There are currently telehealth devices out in use in Florida as per a recent press release. Studies are showing that there is about a 48% savings when using telehealth at the care provider level – consumer benefit is even more because it increases quality of care, eliminates the need to visit a hospital very often, etc.
- Patient Discharge – Over 20% of discharged patients are readmitted for complications. The solution proposed by Authentidate, distributed by Nortel right now (division acquired by Avaya), automatically provides referrals, increases the audit trail, notifies healthcare providers immediately when a patient can be discharged, provides follow-up services, and eliminates paper/fax communication by making it all electronic.
Product Overview: Authentidate provides electronic medical record services. In all three cases, the basic offering relies on the software portion, which is what Authentidate handles.
Stock Overview:
The stock price has made significant moves from hovering in the 30-40 cent range for a while, and is now approaching the $2 territory.
