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“We’ve watched virtual care solve some of the most complex healthcare issues around the globe, as well as right here in Canada through our own programs,” said Dr. Brett Belchetz, CEO and Co-Founder of Maple.
The telehealth sector as a whole has seen incredible growth since March as thousands of patients in both the U.S. and Canada looked for alternatives to in-person meetings during lockdowns. Investors caught onto the trend and bought into leading publicly traded telehealth companies such as Teledoc Health Inc., which is up more than 50 per cent since the beginning of March. The company saw an unprecedented surge in patient visits, which were up more than 200 per cent in the second quarter of 2020 in comparison to the same time last year. Teledoc’s rapid growth allowed it to enter the M&A space, where it announced it would be merging with Livongo Health Inc. in a US$18 billion deal.
In a survey published in April, McKinsey and Co. found that 46 per cent of U.S. consumers were using telehealth services when only 11 per cent had accessed them in 2019. Pre-COVID, revenues for the U.S. space only reached $3 billion. Now, McKinsey believes the potential “US$250 billion of current US healthcare spend could potentially be virtualized.”
The investment into Maple is the latest in a series of healthcare investments made by Loblaw over the past decade, beginning with its acquisition of Shoppers Drug Mart in 2014. Two years later, it acquired QHR Corp., which was at the time a leader in the electronic medical records market, for $170 million.
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