TORONTO, Dec. 06, 2022 (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 Virgin Pulse, the leading global digital-first health, wellbeing, and navigation company, today announced their partnership to bring the world’s #1 platform for employee health and wellbeing to Canadian small through large-sized businesses. The Virgin Pulse platform will be offered by MCI’s Corporate Health Solutions division as MCI Wellness Connect with immediate availability for interested customers. MCI will be offering MCI Wellness Connect to its established base of more than 600 corporate clients while introducing it to additional market segments. Related future offerings may include making MCI Wellness Connect available directly to individual consumers.
“Virgin Pulse is the ‘gold standard’ of health and wellbeing platforms, and we’re excited to offer an MCI-branded solution to smaller Canadian employers that, until now, have not been able to access this premium level of wellness support for their growing business,” said Dr. Alexander Dobranowski, CEO of MCI. “Virgin Pulse is aligned with MCI’s vision of making care more accessible, more preventative, more personalized, and more affordable.”
Powered by Virgin Pulse, MCI Wellness Connect will serve as “a digital front door” connecting employees with the right resources at the right time to help create sustainable healthy habits. MCI Wellness Connect will provide Canadian businesses access to all the features of the Virgin Pulse platform that normally benefit enterprise-size companies. The platform delivers unmatched engagement and meaningful health outcomes, leveraging a proprietary combination of behavior science, gamification, and incentives that motivate employees to create healthy, lasting habits. The Virgin Pulse platform has 14 million members globally and is growing significantly in the Canadian market.
“Research shows that companies with healthy and engaged employees experience lower workplace stress, increased productivity and profitability, and higher employee engagement and retention,” said Laura Walmsley, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Employers, at Virgin Pulse. “Creating a culture of health is becoming a priority for both businesses and their people. Our partnership with MCI extends the positive impact of Virgin Pulse to even more employees in Canada – changing more lives for good.”
MCI Wellness Connect is a game changer for Canadian businesses trying to compete for employees. With MCI Wellness Connect and the proven engagement elements built into it, clients can be confident that they’ve made a great investment in their employees, with the analytics to back it up. AI-driven personalization, daily health and wellbeing content, habit tracking, an expansive challenge library, on-demand live coaching with microlearning content, and access available for friends and family help ensure ongoing employee engagement in their pursuit and practice of total wellbeing.
“MCI Corporate Health Solutions already is widely recognized for its clinical excellence and experience in the occupational health and disability management sectors. With this Virgin Pulse partnership we will leapfrog into a position of strength in corporate wellness,” said Genevieve Sadak, Vice President MCI Corporate Health Solutions. “Canadians often do not have the opportunity to avail themselves of comprehensive education and strategies to improve their health and make lifestyle changes. We strive to provide a significant resource through our employer-based health and wellness programming to address this need and to make a real, quantifiable, and sustained difference in the lives of Canadians in our client programs.”
As a potential solution to many of the employee-relevant challenges in today’s corporate world, MCI Wellness Connect is scalable and flexible. The website interface – also available as a mobile app – integrates an organization’s health and wellbeing offerings into one place. The ecosystem of services that are built into The MCI Wellness Connect platform will also conveniently provide linked access to an ecosystem of related MCI health services. By deploying Virgin Pulse’s proven solution via MCI Wellness Connect, employers will benefit from reduced turnover, improved employee stress levels, healthier employees with less lost productivity, and reduced pharmaceutical costs. Employee wellbeing and engagement will be boosted, improving business performance and building a healthy company culture.
“MCI Wellness Connect is the avenue by which Canadian businesses can access the best in health and wellness products typically packaged exclusively for very large companies,” said Maddie Walker, President of MCI Corporate Health Solutions. “Corporations are looking for effective solutions that help contain the costs associated with employee health. MCI Wellness Connect both assesses risk and drives behavior change for employees at all risk levels.”
The new MCI Wellness Connect product brings the crucial wellness offering into MCI’s tech and data-enabled high-performance healthcare network and its already strong corporate health solutions portfolio – well-regarded for expertise and experience in providing accessible, convenient and cost-effective health care services to employers – and complements its existing occupational health services available via a network of MCI The Doctors Office clinics, MCI’s patient experience platform MCI Connect, and MCI’s affiliated service providers.
“With this important partnership, MCI is, yet again, proud to be transforming care delivery with a preventative approach and custom tech-forward initiatives. We’re confident that we’ll see strong interest in MCI Wellness Connect as it provides so much of what Canadian businesses need to be competitive employers known for putting their people first,” added Dr. Dobranowski.
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 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. 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 Virgin Pulse
Virgin Pulse is the leading digital-first health, wellbeing, and navigation company that empowers organizations across the globe to activate populations, improve health outcomes, and reduce spend in an era of accelerating cost and complexity. Virgin Pulse’s Homebase for Health® connects data, people, and technology to deliver high tech, human touch experiences that engage and reward individual journeys. Virgin Pulse impacts over 100 million people across 190 countries by helping Fortune 500, national health plans, and many other organizations change lives – and businesses – for good. For more tips and insights, connect with us on Twitter or LinkedIn.
For media enquiries please contact:
Nolan Reeds | nolan@mcionehealth.com
Julie Sculley | julie.sculley@virginpulse.com
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 include statements with respect to the anticipated health benefits, increase in quality of services, and other impacts of MCI’s decision to partner with Virgin Pulse. The words “to help”, “increase”, “create”, “expect”, “anticipate”, “vision”, “projected”, “predicted”, “future”, “intended”, “grow”, “potential”, “extend”, “strive”, “continue”, “achieve”, or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain future conditions, actions, events or results “will”, “may”, “likely”, “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 collaboration with Virgin Pulse; MCI’s ability to effectively roll out its MCI Wellness Connect 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; the stability of general economic and market conditions; currency exchange rates and interest rates; sufficiency of current working capital to support future operating and working capital requirements; equity and debt markets continuing to provide MCI with access to capital; MCI’s ability to continue to operate as a going concern; MCI's ability to comply with applicable laws and regulations; MCI's continued compliance with third party intellectual property rights; the anticipated effects of COVID-19; 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, 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.
