Amid an acquisition spree that’s seen Well Heath Technologies Corp. (TSX:WELL) buy more than 20 companies over the past few years, this month the Vancouver-based provider of digital health services took aim at its biggest target to date.
The deal – worth up to $266 million – to acquire Ontario’s MyHealth Partners Inc. would make Well Health the largest owner of outpatient clinics across Canada with 74 locations.
Like vinyl records making a comeback in the era of streaming, it marks the biggest sign yet that digital health providers are doubling down on physical offerings even as the pandemic accelerates the adoption of everything from telehealth consultations to electronic medical records.
“Today’s a really interesting example of us not just buying a clinic or group of clinics, but buying a platform that has been very successful in modernizing and digitizing health-care clinics,” Well Health CEO Hamed Shahbazi told BIV the day the transaction was announced.
Well Health, which already owns and operates some of its own clinics, is the third-largest provider of electronic medical records in Canada and provides services for everything from telehealth to cybersecurity. MyHealth owns and operates 48 locations in Ontario, while about 75% of its consultations are done via telehealth.
Meanwhile, Vancouver-based Telus Corp. (TSX:T) is also jumping on board this trend, with subsidiary Telus Health opening two new clinics: one in its hometown and another in Victoria.
Patients can first engage in a virtual consultation using the Telus Health MyCare app and then visit one of the clinics nearby if a followup in person is required.
Keir Peterson, chief medical officer for Telus Health MyCare, said the company is trying to address issues surrounding the volume of Canadians who are without a family physician or primary care provider.
“By combining a high-quality, video-based service but also these physical clinics, it allows us to really comprehensively meet those needs so we can attach patients to those clinics and provide longitudinal primary care services,” he said.
This, as well as the Well Health-MyHealth deal, comes amid further consolidation within the realm of digital health services.
Earlier this month, the telecom giant rebranded its virtual care offerings from Babylon by Telus Health to Telus Health MyCare. Telus had entered into a licensing deal with U.K.-based Babylon Health Partners in 2019 before acquiring its Canadians operations in January 2021.
“The relationship was one where Babylon was running the clinical service delivery with Telus taking on a number of other roles including the marketing and distribution,” Peterson said.
“The two teams as they collaborated together moved towards a relationship where it made sense for them to really focus on their strengths. So those strengths would be, again: Telus in terms of their knowledge of the health-care landscape, the knowledge of Canada, Canadians, the needs of Canadian patients. And then Babylon leveraging their strengths in software and medical artificial intelligence.”
Meanwhile, Well Health’s shares have more than doubled since the start of the pandemic as practitioners have been forced to rapidly accelerate adoption of digital technologies in medical clinics.
“Medical practitioners, clinicians, they’re so burdened, and there’s so much physician fatigue out there,” Shahbazi said. “The reality is there’s just not enough of them out there to take care of the growth in population, and so a big part of our mission as a company has been to transform these clinics digitally … to add software and workflow to make them more efficient.” •
