TORONTO, March 09, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MCI Onehealth Technologies Inc. (“MCI”) (TSX: DRDR), a clinician-led healthcare technology company focused on increasing access to and quality of healthcare, and uMed, the UK-based provider of a leading automated patient-recruitment platform, are pleased to announce a partnership that will increase patient access to international research studies and accelerate enrollment and improve retention in clinical trials. MCI is uMed’s first Canadian partner.

“MCI’s collaboration with uMed will open a new subset of research that emphasizes real-world evidence and patient-reported information. MCI firmly believes that patient-facing technology is a core component for increasing access to healthcare and for making care more personalized,” said Dr. Alexander Dobranowski, founder and CEO of MCI. “MCI is already uniquely positioned in that we use technology to screen clinical data efficiently and compliantly to flag patients as potential participants for research trials. Once potential participants are flagged from among our more than three million patient records, uMed provides a highly efficient and incredibly fast method for contacting, enrolling, and ongoingly engaging these MCI patients, for any current clinical trial and for future relevant trials. This collaboration creates another innovative avenue by which MCI’s clinical insights as a service program can help optimize patient care, provide access to meaningful clinical trial opportunities and bring value to life sciences stakeholders and health systems.”

uMed connects healthcare professionals and their patients with ground-breaking research opportunities. Their digital patient recruitment platform enables healthcare professionals to participate in more research with minimal additional workload, providing their patients with better access to studies that are highly relevant to their specific condition.

uMed’s ability to capture patient-reported outcomes and real-world evidence is in demand for advancing clinical insights and fosters patient-empowerment. Their platform and approach are fully compliant with all relevant requirements for consent, privacy, data security and research ethics for clinical research, additionally allowing for opportunities to more easily and compliantly re-engage patients for follow-up or related trials.

“We’re thrilled to partner with innovators like MCI for our entry into Canada. Our two companies are aligned in the vision of how access to research can help optimize health for specific patients and more broadly across populations. Faster and more customizable cohorts in interventional and non-interventional clinical trials lead to better care options sooner, and more cost efficiently,” said Dr. Matt Wilson, CEO of uMed. “In MCI we see a partner that not only shares uMed’s driven commitment to supporting effective, efficient clinical research, but also a company with the existing clinical data lake to immediately utilize the uMed platform for significant outcomes.”

In keeping with its objective to be a preeminent health technology leader, MCI nurtures international opportunities to leverage its vast pool of high-quality structured clinical information. MCI’s audience for clinical insights continues to grow in Canada and the US and will further benefit from collaboration with international leader uMed.

About MCI:
MCI is a healthcare technology company focused on empowering patients and doctors with advanced technologies to increase access, improve quality, and reduce healthcare costs. As part of the healthcare community for over 30 years, MCI operates one of Canada’s leading primary care networks with approximately 280 physicians and specialists, serves more than one million patients annually and had nearly 300,000 telehealth visits last year, including online visits via mciconnect.ca. MCI additionally offers an expanding suite of occupational health service offerings that support a growing list of nearly 600 corporate customers. MCI provides data insights as a service in six categories: rare disease; complex major medical/chronic; patient cohort building; clinical trial recruitment; synthetic health data and bespoke insights. Led by a proven management team of doctors and experienced executives, MCI remains focused on executing a strategy centered around acquiring technology and health services that complement the company’s current roadmap. For more information, visit mcionehealth.com 

About uMed
uMed is a healthcare technology company dedicated to accelerating clinical trials by making participation in research more accessible for healthcare professionals and their patients. The uMed platform takes on the workload of recruiting patients for clinical studies by automating the process of identification, screening, and engagement, all on behalf of the patient’s recognized provider. The technology seamlessly links clinical data from consented patients to ePROs, device data, and biosamples to rapidly create study-specific datasets and registries. This enables healthcare professionals to participate in more revenue-generating research with minimal additional workload, and provides patients with better access to life changing studies. uMed is embedded across a global network of providers that represent over 10 million lives across the UK, US, Canada and Australia. For more information, visit https://www.umed.io/ In November 2020, the company raised £3.7 million in venture capital.

For media enquiries please contact:
Nolan Reeds | MCI Onehealth | nolan@mcionehealth.com
Lucy White | uMed | lucy.white@umed.io

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release, constitute “forward-looking information” and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws and are based on assumptions, expectations, estimates and projections as of the date of this press release. Forward-looking statements in this press release include statements with respect to the anticipated research, technological and strategic benefits of MCI’s partnership and offering with uMed, as well as MCI's future growth, strategic plan, results of operations, performance and business prospects and opportunities, in general. The words “increase”, “accelerate”, “allow for”, “help”, “improve”, “potentially”, “believes”, “enables”, “expand”, “expected”, “creates”, “advancing”, “opportunities”, “to grow”, “future”, “objective”, “anticipated”, “continues to” or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain future conditions, actions, events or results “will”, “may”, “could”, “would”, “should”, “might” or “can”, or negative versions thereof, and other similar expressions, identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon management’s perceptions of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as a number of specific factors and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by MCI as of the date of such statements, are outside of MCI's control and are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies which could result in the forward-looking statements ultimately being entirely or partially incorrect or untrue. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on various assumptions, including, but not limited to, the following: MCIs ability to maintain its relationships and continue to implement its partnership with uMed; MCI’s ability to maintain and grow their relationships with data-insight customers; the potential benefits of uMed’s technology and platform; MCI's ability to achieve its growth strategy; the demand for MCI's products and fluctuations in future revenues; the availability of future business ventures, commercial arrangements and acquisition targets or opportunities and MCI’s ability to consummate them; the effects of competition in the industry; the requirement for increasingly innovative product solutions and service offerings; trends in customer growth; sufficiency of current working capital to support future operating and working capital requirements; the stability of general economic and market conditions; currency exchange rates and interest rates; equity and debt markets continuing to provide MCI with access to capital; MCI’s ability to continue to operate as a going concern; MCI and uMed’s ability to comply with applicable laws and regulations; MCI and uMed’s continued compliance with third party intellectual property rights; and that the risk factors noted below, collectively, do not have a material impact on MCI's business, operations, revenues and/or results. By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific and which give rise to the possibility that expectations, forecasts, predictions, projections or conclusions will not prove to be accurate, that assumptions may not be correct, and that objectives, strategic goals and priorities will not be achieved.

Known and unknown risk factors, many of which are beyond the control of MCI, could cause the actual results of MCI to differ materially from the results, performance, achievements or developments expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risk factors include but are not limited to those factors which are discussed under the section entitled “Risk Factors” in MCI's annual information form dated March 31, 2022, each of which is available under MCI's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. The risk factors are not intended to represent a complete list of the factors that could affect MCI and the reader is cautioned to consider these and other factors, uncertainties and potential events carefully and not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Forward-looking statements are provided for the purpose of providing information about management’s expectations and plans relating to the future. MCI disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, or to explain any material difference between subsequent actual events and such forward-looking statements, except to the extent required by applicable law. All of the forward-looking statements contained in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements.