- Digital therapeutics is a rapidly emerging (and lucrative) healthcare niche
- It is already being customized to help optimize psychedelic medicine
- Mind Cure’s acquisition puts it in elite company
Psychedelic stocks have been fairly quiet over the past week or so after a torrid run for several companies. The latest acquisition from
Mind Cure Health (CAN:MCUR / US:MCURF) may be just what it takes to create a new buzz among psychedelics investors.
It is
Epiphany360, a digital therapeutics platform for treating mental health conditions. Medtech.
That still won’t mean a lot to many psychedelics investors. But not for much longer.
Digital technology for 21st century healthcare
Medtech is
hot. How hot?
Psychedelic Stock Watch recently shone a spotlight on this rapidly emerging hi-tech healthcare niche.
How Medtech Is Taking Healthcare Into The 21st Century
New communications and data collection technology being applied to medical treatment – medtech – promises to make healthcare much more effective and efficient going forward.
Medtech is a technology platform. New technology to collect and analyze data, and then deliver it to physicians in real time. It is about to take healthcare into the 21st century.
Real-time reporting – 24/7 – is a basic element of all critical systems management in the world of business.
Yet when it comes to the most critical “system” of all, the human body, our maintenance and data collection is still firmly rooted in the 20th century, or even the 19th.
Physicians “monitor” patient health (outside of exceptional circumstances) via appointments.
The patient visits the doctor and reports all his/her medical data subsequent from the previous visit.
No real-time data for physicians. And relying on a patient’s memory (or even honesty) means the data itself may be suspect.
Medtech is a digital therapeutics platform to facilitate data collection and deliver it to physicians in real time. And more.
By incorporating AI into these platforms, the technology can not only improve data collection but also data
analysis.
Man and machine combine to provide better healthcare
When does a patient need to move up or push back a follow-up medical appointment? When do medical symptoms show the potential for an emergency? When does a medication need to be changed or discontinued due to side effects?
A physician can make those determinations. But, in many cases, so too can an effective AI platform.
Patients receive more timely feedback on their treatment. Treatment schedules are optimized. Physicians are freed up from routine diagnostic work and are thus able to respond to more involved or urgent matters more efficiently.
Better. Faster. Saving time. Saving healthcare dollars.
Revolutionizing healthcare by bringing (human) systems management to the 21st century. And there are big dollars chasing the tech that will drive this revolution – especially as it applies to mental health care.
Digital therapeutics: big need, big dollars
Just ask private company,
Mindstrong Health. Mindstrong is a medtech company that is developing its own digital platform to bring to market for mental health treatment.
Mindstrong just raised $100 million for its Series C financing round.
Let’s put this into context. Psychedelic drug industry leader
Compass Pathways (US:CMPS) only raised $80 million in its Series B financing, it’s final round of private funding.
And speaking of Compass, guess who else is very interested in incorporating digital therapeutics into their psychedelic drug operations?
From the Compass Pathways
prospectus:
We are using digital technology in this Phase IIb trial, including an online portal to help patients prepare for their psilocybin experience, and a web-based “shared knowledge” interactive platform to complement therapist training. We are also collecting digital phenotyping information through the measurement of human-smartphone interactions.
After the trial, these data will be compared with information collected from validated psychiatric scales, such as MADRS, to develop potential digital applications to help anticipate relapse of depression. In the future we plan to expand our research into additional digital technologies to complement and augment our therapies.
The need for innovation in mental health care is significant, given that the current paradigm is ineffective for millions of people. [emphasis mine]
With Compass well into a Phase 2 clinical trial involving psychedelic drug-assisted therapy, it is one of the most experienced psychedelics companies when it comes to administering psychedelic therapies for treating mental health.
Compass Pathways is already using some digital technology to facilitate its psychedelics-assisted therapy. And it sees a further “need for innovation” here.
That should make many emerging psychedelics companies stand up and take notice. Mind Cure Health did precisely that.
The Epiphany360 digital therapeutics platform
On October 21st, Mind Cure
announced the acquisition of Epiphany360.
The Company’s Chairman, President and CEO Philip Tapley showed that he had been closely following the moves of Mind Cure’s billion-dollar competitor.
We are accelerating our move into digital therapeutics with the Epiphany360 platform to bring evidence-based insights in the diagnoses and treatment of patients suffering from mental health related illness.
Technology innovation has a key role to play in modern healthcare as we look to find new and more effective ways to treat mental health. Epiphany360 will enable Mind Cure to more effectively create and evaluate products, drugs and therapies.
Junior psychedelics company Mind Cure Health, with its
CAD$32 million market cap has clearly set its sights on being a big-league player in the psychedelic space.
Epiphany360 is a proprietary and cloud-based digital therapeutics platform. It monitors, collects and generates evidence-based insights to optimize treatment and improve patient outcomes in mental health-related conditions. It is powered by proprietary software that compares treatments and outcomes to continuously improve the validity and accuracy of unique patient care options and is backed by 25 years of clinical experience and scientific data.
Four feasibility studies are currently underway, the protocols of which have been designated ‘non-significant risk.’ The date being collected will form part of Epiphany360’s submission as a Class II medical device.
Technically a “device”, Epiphany360 is at an advanced stage of development as Mind Cure seeks to obtain FDA approval. This acquisition moves Mind Cure into elite company.
Mind Cure rapidly builds a strong foundation
Investors have already been watching Mind Cure with interest.
Since it had its own IPO debut on September 21st, Mind Cure has outperformed CMPS. It moved from its initial trading price of CAD$0.20 to CAD$0.70 in just its first week and it closed on Tuesday at CAD$0.71.
Equally, investors have been watching Mind Cure’s corporate development. Like assembling a puzzle, with each new piece a clearer picture of the Company is emerging.
Mind Cure went public with its nootropics division in place. Its Moonbeam product line of organic functional mushrooms is ready to be rolled out in what is already
a $23 billion market.
Then came key personnel additions.
A new COO. Two-time Top Female Entrepreneur in Canada, Kelsey Ramsden, signed on to direct operations.
Several experts in psychedelic medicine added as advisors. Hamilton Morris, Dr. Dan Engle and Dr. Jason Wallach have all been named to Mind Cure’s Scientific Advisory Board.
More recently, on October 15th Mind Cure
announced the appointment of Geoff Belair as its Chief Technology Officer.
An expert in fintech platforms, it may not have been immediately apparent to investors what role Belair would be filling at Mind Cure. With today’s news, it's easy to see where this puzzle-piece fits in Mind Cure's operations.
Mind Cure: small market cap, big business model
What happened when Compass Pathways went public?
One of the things that happened – with much more attention on these stocks – is that investors took a closer look at other psychedelics companies.
They saw
MindMed Inc (CAN:MMED / US:MMEDF) sitting with a psychedelic drug R&D portfolio at least as robust as Compass itself. But CMPS had a US$1.3 billion market cap and MindMed had a CAD$130 million market cap.
The market began to revalue MindMed. Today it sits with a market cap of ~CAD$400 million.
What happens when the market starts taking a closer look at Mind Cure (with its CAD$32 million market cap) and starts to compare it to its larger peers?
Mind Cure doesn’t have a psychedelics R&D portfolio like MindMed. But MindMed doesn’t have a digital therapeutics platform like Mind Cure, nor a nootropics division that can start generating near-term revenues.
As the market digests this latest acquisition, at what level will Mind Cure be revalued?
For any investor whose answer is significantly above CAD$32 million, the time to buy in is now.
DISCLOSURE: The writer holds shares in MindMed Inc and Mind Cure Health. Mind Cure Health is a client of Psychedelic Stock Watch.
