SAN DIEGO, CA--(Marketwire - Apr 14, 2011) - CommerceTel Corporation (
The partnership will combine CommerceTel's award winning mobile services technology with Magellan's world class team of healthcare professionals and its VirtualClinic™ telemedicine/telehealth platform to innovate and capitalize on mobile healthcare opportunities in caring for patients anywhere, anytime. Healthcare delivery is a worldwide industry of more than US$4 trillion annually. Yet today's delivery paradigm is overly expensive, lacks consistency, uniform patient safety measures and quality controls, transparency for consumers, accessibility for millions, and connectivity between providers and patients, regardless of country. Healthcare has had to go global -- as underscored by increasingly mobile populations, workers in remote circumstances without adequate medical infrastructure, and even the trend toward "medical tourism," or destination healthcare, whereby people travel great distances for affordable, accessible care. The latter group spent an estimated US$40 billion in 2010, representing a transaction base that is growing at an annual rate exceeding 20%. With such mobility, coupled with the uneven and limited distribution of quality care delivery systems, CommerceTel and Magellan are uniquely positioned to capitalize on innovating mobile technology, in combination with medical oversight and a telemedicine backbone, to address the needs of global healthcare delivery.
Magellan is led by its CEO Terry R. Knapp, MD, and its COO Antonia Arnaert, RN, MPH, PhD. Dr. Knapp is a Stanford-trained, U.S. board-certified reconstructive surgeon and an accomplished medical device and medical services entrepreneur and corporate executive. He has 39 years of international medical experience, providing volunteer reconstructive surgery to children in developing countries, as well as founding and leading several successful, multinational public and private medical device and health information technology companies. Dr. Knapp has authored 15 U.S.-issued and many foreign patents in the fields of medical device technology, mobile health solutions, and medical informatics. Dr. Arnaert, a nurse and tenured Associate Professor in telehealth nursing research at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, has national and international experience in eHealth care delivery. She is a pioneer in the development and implementation of eHealth and mHealth programs that take advantage of existing telecommunications structures to reach and treat patients outside the traditional medical systems. Dr. Arnaert has published numerous peer-reviewed publications on the subject and is frequently invited as a keynote speaker in the area of eHealth care.
"The paradigm shift to computing and communications on mobile devices is accelerating massively," said Dr. Knapp. "No device in the history of mankind has penetrated the global population like the mobile phone. The tablet computer now represents a new wave of mobile connectivity and power. And wireless devices that generate digital signals from the physiological functioning of the body, transmitted by mobile devices, enable real-time care to occur anytime, anywhere. Our partnership with CommerceTel allows us to innovate healthcare solutions on the mobile platform today. Such solutions, integrated with a medical care provider and interactive telemedicine back-end, create a true, functional clinic in cyberspace -- our VirtualClinic. We believe that mHealth applications riding on CommerceTel's mobile communications platform for information distribution, provides us with distinct market advantage today, and the technology to develop new concepts for the future."
Dr. Arnaert, reflecting on her 20-year experience in telehealth innovation, observed: "I have been frustrated in the past by the inability of my applications in mHealth to easily cross the barriers of differing hardware platforms and carrier standards. CommerceTel solves that problem, greatly increasing the ability of any mHealth solution to provide its value to the consumer and care provider. Now, we can realistically provide care across the globe, anywhere, anytime."
"Healthcare is a massive opportunity for the mobile platform," added Dennis Becker, CEO of CommerceTel. "Drs. Knapp and Arnaert and their team have an unparalleled track record bringing healthcare technologies and business models to market. We're extremely pleased that Magellan has chosen CommerceTel as its partner in pioneering the vast mobile healthcare opportunity."
The two companies will leverage CommerceTel's C4 mobile services platform, and related technologies, to co-develop "mHealth" solutions, focusing initially on remote workers such as seafarers, and those traveling for specialized care. Existing mobile channels such as IVR, SMS and MMS will be creatively applied to Magellan's existing phone and Internet based healthcare solutions, while Magellan also designs, develops and deploys new concepts and mHealth applications.
About CommerceTel
CommerceTel is an award-winning provider of proprietary mobile marketing technologies and the inventor of C4, a unique, enterprise-grade platform empowering brands to engage mobile consumers via multiple channels. The only system of its kind, C4 is a cloud-based solution providing broad mobile communications and extensive CRM features. It is integrated with multiple tier-one PSTN/ IP carriers and micropayment processing facilities as well as with carrier premium SMS billing systems.
About Magellan Global Health
Magellan Global Health is a health and medical care services company that coordinates, manages and delivers care using highly trained and qualified medical professionals that employ media technology (Internet, mobile communications) for care delivery. The Company has two divisions: Health Services and Health Applications, the latter to conceptualize, develop, test and market new telehealth and mHealth technologies.
Safe Harbor
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the "Act"). Statements including words such as "seek," "intend," "believe," "plan," "estimate," "expect," "anticipate" and other similar expressions are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Act. Some or all of the events or results anticipated by these forward-looking statements may not occur. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include the impact of intense competition, the continuation or worsening of current economic conditions and the condition of the domestic and global credit and capital markets as well as the Risk Factors disclosed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 27, 2010. Further information on CommerceTel's risk factors is contained in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. CommerceTel does not undertake any duty nor does it intend to update the results of these forward-looking statements.
Contact Information:
Investor Contacts:
John Liviakis
Liviakis Financial Communications
Phone: 415.389.4670