With ZoomMed`s software system, MDs write

With ZoomMed's software system, MDs
write prescriptions electronically
By PETER HADEKEL, The Gazette
November 10, 2010
For years, there's been plenty of talk about making the medical system more efficient. One common
theme is the growing need for electronic patient information that can be shared among health-care
providers.
Montreal-based ZoomMed Inc., a 5-year old software company with 50 employees, is already moving
down that road. Its main product is a Web-based software system that links patients, doctors, pharmacies
and drug companies in real time.
The software allows doctors with a mobile device or computer to write prescriptions electronically, using
bar-code technology.
ZoomMed has signed up 3,000 doctors and 400 clinics in Quebec and Ontario who use the system free
of charge. Revenue is derived from pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies who pay for the service,
says president and chief executive Yves Marmet.
The system now handles 30 million prescriptions and renewals per year, eliminating errors in
prescriptions that are often the result of poor handwriting.
With a bar code, pharmacies simply scan the prescription into their computer systems and don't make
mistakes entering the information themselves.
All this is important in reducing the risk of fatalities that can be caused by improperly prescribed drugs. It's
estimated that 150,000 patients a year are victims of prescription errors in Canada, causing 700 deaths.
The software allows a physician to obtain online information quickly on potentially adverse drug
interactions. It also analyzes and displays information such as the medications prescribed most frequently
by that doctor.
"Doctors like using it because it's quick and simple," Marmet says. "Even if they've never used a
computer, we can train them in an hour."
The real potential is south of the border, where the medical market is 10 times larger than in Canada.
When the company displayed its ZRx Prescriber at a recent medical trade show in the U.S., the typical
reaction was: "Wow! How can we get that?" Marmet said.
ZoomMed moved a step closer to the U.S. this week, receiving certification to join the online pharmacy
network Surescript. The network handles about 190 million electronic prescriptions per year.
While Surescript has been growing fast, it has only scratched the surface. Just 12 per cent of total
prescriptions in the U.S. are processed electronically.
Recent U.S. legislation creates significant financial incentives for doctors to write electronic prescriptions.
By 2012, those who haven't adopted the new technology could face penalties.
The U.S. certification is an important step for the company's expansion and can't come fast enough for
investors. Losses at ZoomMed over the last three years alone have totalled more than $13.5 million.
It went public in 2005 on the TMX's Venture exchange and has raised $22 million in a series of share
issues and private placements. But the stock currently languishes at around 20 cents.
Marmet expects to break even on a cash-flow basis in 2011. The business plan calls for finding a
licensing partner in the U.S. that will buy rights to the software, rather than have ZoomMed try to market
the product itself.
The company is undervalued in the stock market, he argues, because the significant potential value of a
licensing partnership in the U.S. has yet to be recognized.
Marmet is a software engineer who made an impact in Quebec in the 1980s with a company called
Hypocrat. It computerized elements of the health-care system, including pharmacy chains like Uniprix and
Pharmaprix, CLSCs, hospitals, doctors' appointments and billings to the Regie de l'assurance maladie.
"Until 1995, we had a big share of the health-care market, then I sold my shares."
After several years away from the health-care industry, he returned in 2005 after doctors told him of the
need for an electronic prescribing system that could reduce delays and empower physicians with more
information.
Now that governments in North America are making a big push toward electronic prescriptions, the timing
is right for ZoomMed's products, he believes.
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