The editor TMM Software multiplies acquisitions in remote monitoring

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TMM Software has announced since September 2019 the acquisition of Mental Apps, a start-up specializing in psychiatric monitoring, and WheezLab, which develops tools for monitoring asthma, we recall.

These acquisitions required "a real financial effort", said Serge Massot, without further details, during an exchange with TICsanté on the company's strategy.

The company, whose main activity is comfort in the patient's bed, wishes to "specialize on suffering routes, those where patients have many difficulties and where there is not much follow-up, in particular nephrology and psychiatry ".

"There are two types of players in the remote monitoring market," said the general manager of TMM Software. "The big manufacturers, who are present in the most widespread pathologies such as diabetes, and the more modest players like us who distribute the less targeted pathologies, which represent 60% of the market. We want to be present head-on in this segment."

The acquisition of Mental Apps, which develops applications for monitoring mental illnesses, is part of this strategy. "In psychiatry, there has been no innovation for 20 years," said Serge Massot. "There are a lot of comorbidities in psychiatry, with for example 30% of cancer patients who are also in depression. We want to digitize their follow-up to improve the quality of care and their quality of life, and ultimately their health."

The purchase of WheezLab, a start-up that develops monitoring tools for asthmatics, corresponds to the same strategy for asthma.

TMM Software intends to continue its external growth with "minority shareholdings" and a new acquisition "which will be announced in less than three months".

It also offers its Aptelecare remote monitoring solution to healthcare establishments such as middleware. "We offer our expertise in regulation and data collection to establishments, which can 'connect' their biomedical sensors and their applications to Aptelecare," explained the director general.

The solutions acquired by TMM Software are also intended to be integrated into Aptelecare.

An experiment within the framework of the Stages program

As part of the Stages program (Telemedicine funding experiments to improve health care pathways), health establishments pay a license depending on the number of patients using Aptelecare.

As a reminder, article 54 of the Social Security Financing Law (LFSS) for 2018 renewed the Stages program for a period of four years. These experiments relate to five pathologies: cardiac insufficiency, renal insufficiency, respiratory insufficiency, diabetes and implantable cardiac prostheses.

Remote monitoring represents "less than a quarter of the activity of TMM Software, but its growth will triple between 2019 and 2020", said Serge Massot.

"The market is very difficult," he noted. "The cost of R&D is very important, the regulations very complex: if we had not anticipated these very high costs from the start, and without our comfort activity which brings in a lot of income, we would not have been able to develop the remote monitoring. "

Aptelecare is currently used by eight CHUs and "ten" of private establishments. It is deployed in "eight research projects including four in psychiatry".

Finally, TMM Software is looking for growth relays in overseas departments and regions (Drom) and abroad for its remote monitoring activity. It wishes to develop it in a dozen African countries where it is already present on the comfort market.

"We are in the experimental phase for remote monitoring of risky pregnancies in Morocco, where there is strong geographic isolation," noted Serge Massot.

As for the Drom, they "can have difficulties of access to healthcare comparable to Africa, because of isolation or distances", he noted, citing the example of New Caledonia.

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