TIDMSENS
RNS Number : 8863M
Sensyne Health PLC
14 May 2020
Sensyne Health
("Sensyne", the "Company" or the "Group")
Trading and Business Update
Highlights :
-- Strong revenue growth
-- Increasing demand for Sensyne remote monitoring products
-- GDm-Health, CVm-Health and BPm-Health products supplied free
to NHS during COVID-19 pandemic
-- New commercial research agreement signed with Alexion
-- Appointment of Professor Sir Bruce Keogh KBE as permanent
Chairman of the board of directors
Oxford, U.K. 14 May 2020: Sensyne Health plc (LSE: SENS), the UK
Clinical AI technology company, today announces a trading update
(unaudited) for the year ended 30 April 2020. The Company will
report its audited full year 2020 results in September 2020.
The Company expects to report full year revenues of GBP2.1
million (FY19: GBP0.136 million), slightly ahead of guidance
provided in January 2020 and largely driven by momentum in H2
2020.
Cash and cash equivalents were approximately GBP31.6 million
(FY19: GBP49.3 million) reflecting continued investment in
R&D.
COVID-19 has rapidly accelerated the adoption of digital
technologies in healthcare systems around the world. Advancing
patient care and accelerating the development of new medicines
through the fusion of software, data science and machine learning
technology with medical science are the very foundations of Sensyne
Health.
The Company has a proven track record and embedded expert
resource in these areas, particularly in remote patient monitoring
and clinical AI. Consequently, Sensyne is seeing increasing demand
for its products and technology as individuals, healthcare systems
and the biopharmaceutical industry adapt to the current situation
and make plans for a rapidly digitising healthcare future.
As such, The Company anticipates performing in line with the
Board's expectations for the full year 2021 and the Board looks
forward to the future of the Group with great confidence.
Lord (Paul) Drayson PhD, CEO of Sensyne Health, said:
"Sensyne has adapted well to the changing environment brought on
by COVID-19, is performing strongly and, whilst remaining prudent
in light of the coronavirus pandemic, is well placed to deliver
strong revenue growth during 2020/21."
Operational performance
COVID-19 and working with the NHS
The Company has continued to monitor and respond to the rapidly
changing global situation, including guidance and policy changes
implemented by governments around the world. Sensyne's priority has
been and continues to be on the health and wellbeing of its staff.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on NHS pressures,
priorities and the allocation of NHS resources. Sensyne has not
been directly affected negatively by the pandemic and has responded
well by shifting the focus of its work in collaboration with its
partner NHS Trusts in line with these changes, both in terms of
supporting the shift to remote patient monitoring and in the use of
Clinical AI. The Company has not furloughed any staff, nor has it
participated in any of the other COVID-19 related government
assistance schemes.
Sensyne responds with remote monitoring products during
COVID-19
The Company has seen an acceleration in the adoption of tools by
the NHS that enable remote monitoring of patients and this has led
to increased demand and interest in the Company's new and existing
remote monitoring products including GDm-Health (diabetes in
pregnancy monitoring), CVm-Health (remote COVID-19 symptom
monitoring) and BPm-Health (blood pressure monitoring in
pregnancy).
The anonymised data sets generated by these products have in
turn increased significantly. Sensyne expects that the recent
growth in remote patient monitoring will be maintained post the
pandemic and the Company is well placed to grow its business in
this area in the future.
Progress with NHS agreements and achievement of research
objectives
UK Government policy towards the use of patient data and the
development of tools has changed significantly in recent months
following the creation of NHSX and this change has accelerated in
response to the pandemic, with NHSX focused on the development of
the track & trace app and the creation of a central national
database. The UK is increasingly centralising data assets under the
control of NHSX and NHS Digital and, in addition to the pressures
caused by the coronavirus pandemic, this is slowing the ability of
NHS Trusts to enter into individual agreements with Sensyne. The
Company is awaiting approval for agreements that it entered into in
2019 with Wye Valley and George Eliot NHS Trusts. The Company is
currently in discussions with a number of additional NHS Trusts and
discussions are taking longer than the Company has experienced
previously. The projects with our existing partners Oxford
University Hospitals, Chelsea & Westminster and South
Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trusts are progressing well and the
Company has been able to achieve its research objectives for its
partners and customers.
Business re-organisation well positioned for growth
In Autumn 2019 Sensyne re-organised its business into two
operating divisions, Discovery Sciences (DS) and Software Products
(SP), to improve customer focus. The DS division focuses on
providing services and products to pharmaceutical clients and the
SP division focuses on providing services and products to
healthcare providers such as the NHS. This re-organisation has been
successfully implemented, led by the Company's strengthened
management team, and has led to an enhanced performance in H2 2020,
providing Sensyne with a strong platform for growth, both
organically and by potential acquisitions.
Discovery Sciences
Over the year, the DS division has grown to a team of more than
35 scientists with backgrounds in machine learning, bioinformatics
and epidemiology, working closely with clinicians and biologists,
to build a highly skilled interdisciplinary team.
In response to COVID-19, working in close co-operation with
clinicians at Chelsea & Westminster NHS Foundation Trust, the
DS team has developed algorithms using computer vision for the
analysis of images to automatically detect COVID-19 in the lungs
(ref: link in notes to editors) and algorithms to identify patients
at risk of poor outcomes from COVID-19 infection based on analysis
of EPR data.
Commercial research contract with Alexion
Sensyne has entered into a collaboration with Alexion, a NASDAQ
listed global biopharmaceutical company focused on developing
life-changing therapies for people living with rare disorders. The
collaboration will focus on studying the prevalence and outcomes of
patients in disease areas of interest to Alexion Financial terms
have not been disclosed.
Pharma partnerships
With the recent addition of Alexion, the Company is working with
3 pharmaceutical companies, including Bayer and Roche. The work
under these commercial research contracts has continued to progress
well including during the coronavirus lockdown, but, as is common
with these agreements, the Company is extremely limited in what it
can report in terms of progress.
Notwithstanding the uncertainties caused by the COVID-19
pandemic, the Company's business development activities continue.
Further updates will be provided as and when appropriate.
Software Products
CVm-Health
CVm-Health, which is currently tailored towards COVID-19
response, is an app that was on the Company's development roadmap
for the future. Working effectively with Microsoft and Cognizant,
the Company was able to develop and launch CVm-Health rapidly . The
CVm-Health 'Good Neighbour' app, was developed to provide a secure
way for individuals to monitor and report the management of their
health for COVID-19 related symptoms. The strategy for CVm-Health
is to grow the platform both in the UK and internationally over
time to be an effective system for remote monitoring of individuals
of high risk to COVID-19.
CVm-Health was originally developed as a partnership product,
but Sensyne launched CVm-Health as a free public service during the
pandemic. Since launch, functionality has been enhanced through the
addition of respiratory rate monitoring and the Health Diary, which
enables users to see all recorded data for themselves and the
people they monitor; soon users will be able to share this health
diary with others, for example their healthcare provider. In
addition, given the vulnerability of the Black, Asian and minority
ethnic community to COVID-19, the ability to add ethnicity data has
been added. The next milestone will be the launch in the USA.
Technical development of the US version of CVm-Health will be
completed later in May. The ongoing aim for CVm-Health is to
monitor specific population groups, in partnership with other
organisations, and the Company continues to talk to organisations
in the fields of health, social care and supported living.
Recently, the Company has started to engage with employers and
educational institutions who are looking for tools to support their
management of employees and students who are returning after the
coronavirus lockdown.
GDm-Health
The GDm-Health prescribed digital therapeutic product for the
remote management of diabetes in pregnancy has been adopted by 10
new NHS Trusts going live in the past month bringing the total
number of Trusts using GDm-Health to 23. A further 8 Trusts are
awaiting 'go-live' and an additional 28 Trusts are in discussions
to implement the system in their hospitals. The work with Jefferson
Health for the clinical and economic evaluation of GDm-Health
within a US hospital system is progressing well. The first clinical
use of the product commenced in March 2020 and the product is on
track for US launch, as planned, later in the financial year.
The benefit to patients and real-world impact in using
GDm-Health continues to grow. As at the year end, an extrapolation
of results from the randomized controlled trial suggest use of
GDm-Health should have prevented a total of 2,096 c-sections, 1,246
mothers not needing to transition to pharmacological treatments and
saved 16,545 clinic visits. This represent a 60% increase in the
number of women using GDm-Health since the full year results
published in October 2018.
SYNE
With the collaboration of our clinical partners, Sensyne has
continued to develop the SYNE(TM) GDM/001 algorithm to identify
mothers at risk of transitioning to medication therapy. With the
guidance of our regulatory and quality team we are ready to deploy
SYNE GDM/001 within GDm-Health at two NHS Trusts in early summer to
complete our clinical deployment of this algorithm.
BPm-Health
The SP division has further strengthened its market position in
the remote management of women patients during pregnancy with the
development of BPm-Health, a prescribed digital therapeutic product
for the remote monitoring of blood pressure during pregnancy, which
was launched on 5 May 2020. The Company sees an interesting
opportunity to build its franchise for remote monitoring
applications in women's health and is exploring further
opportunities in this area.
Update on SP collaborations
The collaborations with Cognizant and Microsoft that were
established in late 2019 are delivering results as demonstrated by
the rapid deployment of CVm-Health, accelerating the rate of
development and deployment of software applications developed by
the SP division and Sensyne expects these to underpin further
progress and the entry of the Company's products in the US market
in the current financial year.
Sensyne's high quality and robust regulatory framework
Sensyne has continued to invest in its quality and regulatory
system framework for digital health applications and Clinical AI to
facilitate the development and launch of its clinically validated
products and services in its two lead markets; the UK and US. This
included a number of notable achievements that underpin the
strength of the Company's Quality Management System and information
governance and compliance to Medical Device Directive, Medical
Device Regulation and 21.CFR.820 (US-FDA). These include:
-- accreditation to ISO13485 (independently audited by BSI)
-- accreditation to ISO27001 (independently audited by BSI)
-- compliance to DSP Toolkit (NHS requirement for Information Governance compliance)
-- compliance to DCB0129 (NHS requirement for clinical risk management)
-- compliance to IG framework respecting GDPR requirements,
Caldicott Principles and UK Government Code of Conduct for Digital
Health Technology
-- MHRA registration of GDm-Health, SEND and BPm-Health products
-- s uccessful QMS transition to Medical Device Regulation (from
Medical Device Directive) 1 year in advance of required transition
deadline (May 2021)
-- u ndertook research with MHRA for a special project on "the
creation of synthetic dataset for validation of AI algorithms"
-- l isting in the NICE case studies for digital technologies
-- i nclusion in the CQC regulatory sandbox for digital technologies
LAB10x partnership
The LAB10x partnership established during the year with Evotec,
Oxford University Innovation, Oxford Sciences Innovation and the
University of Oxford is working well with the first project now
launched; ParkAI, a new software application for the management of
Parkinson's disease led by Prof Michelle Hu in the Nuffield
Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford.
Strengthened management team
Over the period, Sensyne has strengthened its senior management
team and grown total headcount in a very competitive market for
talent. 105 people are employed by the Company as at 30 April 2020
(of which 57 have PhDs or similar postgraduate qualification). Key
appointments include:
-- Alan Payne as Chief Information Officer. Alan has led global
technology divisions for over 20 years for many multi-nationals
including Aetna International, Nuffield Health, JPMorganChase,
Merrill Lynch, Oracle and AIG, and is an Honorary Professor in
Intelligent Systems at UCL
-- Dr Lucy Mackillop as Chief Medical Officer, having been an
advisor to the Company since October 2018. Lucy is a consultant
obstetric physician at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation
Trust and Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer, Nuffield Department of
Women's and Reproductive Health, University of Oxford
-- James Chandler as VP Communications, joining from
BenevolentAI where he held the same role leading all marketing and
communications
-- Laura Hillier, currently Legal Director (UK & Ireland)
Pharmaceuticals GSK, will join Sensyne as General Counsel and
Company Secretary on 1 August 2020. She has previously been
Assistant General Counsel at ViiV Healthcare and a solicitor with
Slaughter and May.
-- Sensyne has initiated the search for a new, permanent CFO
with deep experience of public markets and corporate transactions
in the UK and USA to reflect the Company's future ambitions.
Corporate Governance
Following consultation with shareholders following the AGM in
2019 the Board has been progressing a number of matters to
strengthen the Company's corporate governance.
Chairman appointment
The Company is delighted to announce that Professor Sir Bruce
Keogh KBE has agreed to become the permanent Chairman of the board
of directors, having served as an independent director since 10
August 2018 and as interim Chairman since 10 December 2019. One of
the UK's leading doctors, Sir Bruce is Chairman of Birmingham
Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust, having served as NHS
England's National Medical Director for 10 years where he was
responsible for clinical leadership, quality and innovation. Before
this he enjoyed a distinguished career in surgery, working as a
consultant cardiac surgeon at University Hospitals Birmingham
before becoming Director of Surgery at the Heart Hospital and
Professor of Cardiac Surgery at University College London.
Sir Bruce's appointment to Chairman follows an external process
to identify Chair candidates. Whilst a number of strong external
candidates were considered, the Board concluded that Sir Bruce
leading a Board further strengthened by additional independent
non-executive directors was in the best interests of the
Company.
Non-executive Directors
The Nomination Committee is actively seeking a Senior
Independent Director, and two additional non-executive Directors to
strengthen board committees. With the Chairman's appointment now
confirmed, the appointment of these additional non-executive
Directors can now be completed, and further announcements on Board
composition will be made in due course.
Remuneration policy for 2019/20 and 2020/21
The Remuneration Committee undertook an extensive review of
remuneration for the Company's senior management team advised by
Aon Consultants. The Remuneration Committee consulted with
shareholders on the outcome of this review and revised Remuneration
policies for 2019/20 and for 2020/21 were adopted by the Board
following investor feedback. During this review period, Lord
Drayson has received a salary of GBP1 per annum since 22 October
2019. In line with the Company's revised Remuneration policy, the
basic salary for the CEO, Lord Drayson, for all of 2019/20 and for
2020/21 was set at GBP500,000 per annum. Notwithstanding objective
operational progress made throughout 2019/20, the Board and Lord
Drayson have agreed that Lord Drayson will waive receipt of and not
receive his performance related bonus for the full year 2019/20 in
light of the COVID-19 pandemic and in recognition of the Company's
depressed share price.
Corporate Governance review
A&O Consultants were appointed to conduct an independent
review of corporate governance and this work was completed and
reported to the Board in January 2020. The Company seeks to apply
The UK Corporate Governance Code, the highest standard which is
mandatory for listed companies and optional for AIM-quoted
companies such as Sensyne. No significant breaches of, or gaps in,
corporate governance were identified by the review although a
number of areas for improvement of internal processes and
communications were recommended. The Company is currently
implementing these improvements.
-ENDS-
For more information please contact:
Sensyne Health ( www.sensynehealth.com +44 (0) 330 058
) 1845
Lord (Paul) Drayson PhD FREng, Chief Executive
Officer
Michael Norris, Interim Chief Financial
Officer
Peel Hunt LLP (Nominated Adviser and Joint + 44 (0) 20 7418
Broker) 8900
Dr Christopher Golden
James Steel
Oliver Jackson
+ 44 (0) 20 3100
Liberum (Joint Broker) 2000
Bidhi Bhoma
Euan Brown
Consilium Strategic Communications +44 (0) 7780 600290
Mary-Jane Elliott
Sukaina Virji
Melissa Gardiner
sensynehealth@consilium-comms.com
About Sensyne Health
Sensyne Health plc is a clinical AI company that works in
partnership with the NHS to improve patient care and accelerate the
discovery and development of new medicines. Sensyne Health is
listed on the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange (SENS.L).
For more information, please visit: www.sensynehealth.com
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