Alcidion Group Ltd
ASX:ALC
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Alcidion Group Ltd
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Okay. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Alcidion's quarterly results investor webcast this morning. [Operator Instructions] Today's webcast will feature a presentation from Alcidion's Managing Director, Ms. Kate Quirke, followed by a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] But please note, we will hold on all questions until the conclusion of the presentation. I would now like to hand over to Kate, Managing Director of Alcidion.
Thanks very much, Ky. And welcome, everyone, and very good morning to you. Thank you for joining us today for an update on Alcidion's operating and financial performance for the first quarter of the financial year 2021, and that will be covering the 3 months until the 30th of September 2020. Today, we'll be referring to the Appendix 4C quarterly cash flow statement and the business update that was released to the ASX this morning. With me today on the webcast is Alcidion's Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer, Colin MacKinnon. After the presentation, he and I are happy to answer any questions that you have, and we'll remind you at the end about how to use the Q&A function if you're not familiar with it. So getting it underway, Alcidion's made a strong start to the new financial year from a revenue perspective, and we have continued also with our planned investments in order to scale the business, as I've previously outlined in other updates. I'm just going to get my slide working here. It's been a really solid quarter of sales, both from a strategic perspective and in terms of the value with $4.8 million in new sales added in this quarter. That's against the prior quarter revenue where the revenue that was added is a 30% increase on the previous quarter. And we also signed several customer contracts in Australia and the U.K. which have significant potential to expand scope in the future, so a really good grounding in terms of how the product is going in terms of sales trajectory. The strong sales quarter achieved in Q1 is noteworthy for a number of reasons, and I'll just take you through those. Firstly, it's a great recognition of our product offering. It highlights our ability to meet both critical care needs, support better patient outcomes, provide -- use data to drive changes in health care models, so a demonstration of that and a demonstration that the market is understanding the proposition that we have. Secondly, it's a really good indicator and an early indicator that the investment we've made in sales and marketing, just scaling up the business, refreshing the sales team, adding to the sales capability, which began in FY 2020 and is continuing at this point in time, those investments are beginning to take hold and definitely deliver results. Thirdly, this solid result has been achieved in a period where we're still dealing with the impact of COVID-19 from a sales perspective. And the fact that we've been able to have such a solid quarter of sales reinforces the resilience of the business and the understanding of the health care market, its interest in what we have to offer. And whilst the pandemic does continue to pose some challenges to all health care providers, especially as you're probably aware, in the U.K., which is now facing a new wave of cases, what is really pleasing is that we've reached a stage, and I'm talking about this from a health care perspective, where the operating environment has stabilized for them and they understand how to continue to operate in a normal mode whilst dealing with the COVID situation. So a lot of our health care customers now know how to deal with the pandemic, they've got protocols in place to manage cases. And as a result of that, we're actually seeing customers returning their focus back to planning digital health initiatives that they placed on hold at the beginning of the pandemic. They are understanding now how to operate in this environment. So really pleasingly, I note that whilst the situation in the U.K. is unfortunately not -- isn't as positive a position as we are here in Australia and New Zealand, we are moving towards a COVID normal -- or understanding how to operate in a COVID-normal environment. Before I sort of move on to giving you a bit more detail about the sales update this morning, which I'd like to take you through, I just wanted to highlight, which was highlighted in the 4C that went out today, some changes we've made to reporting metrics around revenue. And I just want to take a quick moment to explain that so that everybody understands those changes. It's really around -- well, sorry about that. I'm taking you backward. It's really around the recurring revenue perspective. So the first change we made is to the reclassification of product licenses that were paid upfront from a fixed term to recurring. So previously, we counted the product revenue that was paid upfront. And many of you will have heard me talk about the fact that some customers would like to pay a larger portion of their license fee upfront, and that is generally for a fixed license fee and license period. Across all our product contracts, churn is actually negligible. It's a feature of the type of health care environment that we are operating in. So although the upfront license fee was reported as nonrecurring previously, the customers generally always continue licensing the product after the first license terms has expired. So say they paid for a 3-year license upfront. After the 3 years, they generally continue to renew and keep using the product. So as a result, we've classified that fixed-term licensing fee as recurring revenue. To be honest, it doesn't result in a material change for the current period, as we've reported, with the recurring revenue just 3% higher compared to the former method that we applied. But as we grow our contracts, it will be -- will give you a much more accurate picture of recurring revenue versus nonrecurring. And I think that's important for people to understand the business and be able to compare it to other industry peers who work in the similar sector. Another change we've made is splitting out revenue between product, product implementation and services. You'll recall we did this during the full year FY '20 results webcast. But as of the Q1 -- as of Q1, we're now doing that in the quarterlies as well. And the whole aim of this is to give greater visibility around product contracts, splitting out the largely recurring product revenue base we have from the nonrecurring revenue that's generated. And we generally get that from implementation for our products or from a direct services engagement. If you've got any specific questions about that, we would be more than happy to answer those questions at the end of this call. From a sales -- the mouse is giving me trouble. Just to give you a little bit more color from a sales update perspective. During the first quarter, we signed new contracts and renewals to contracts with a total contract value of $4.8 million. This represents a 30% increase over the prior quarter and a 92% increase over Q1 last year. So our total contracted revenue to be recognized -- able to be recognized in FY 2021 stands at $14.7 million at the end of Q1. So that's just 1 quarter in. We should recognize, at a minimum, $14.7 million if we sold nothing else. And obviously, we plan to have more sales success as the quarters proceed through this financial year. Of that $14.7 million, $9.9 million is recurring and $4.8 million is nonrecurring. And here, in this slide, you can see how we've broken that down into product, implementation and services, with implementation being related to our product sales. So our total contracted revenue to be recognized over the 5 years plus this year is $32.8 million. $27.7 million of that is recurring and $5.1 million is nonrecurring. I'd like to now give you a little bit more detail around the significant contract wins we had in Q1. Some of the important contract wins that we will talk about today briefly were actually announced in July and covered in the previous 4C and in the full year results. So I'll keep this summary a little bit shorter than previously in terms of the detail around those. But if you wanted more in-depth commentary about Sydney LHD and Murrumbidgee LHD in particular, you could read through the previous 4C, the annual report and also the previous webcast we did on the last quarterly, all of which can be found in the Investors section of our website. But just to give you some flavor of what has been a very solid quarter for us in terms of sales. In July, we announced that Murrumbidgee Local Health District had signed 2 initial 12-month contracts, valued at $686,000, and that was to continue the use of Miya Precision, following the use of that -- or the initial implementation of that at Wagga Wagga Base Hospital, which was part of a health innovation challenge -- New South Wales health innovation challenge. In addition to continuing the use that had come out of that innovation challenge, Miya Precision is also being deployed to be used for monitoring patients remotely from the hospital. We're referring to that as virtual care or hospital in the home. And initially, they started for COVID-19 patients, being able to monitor them remotely and keep them safely at home. But we're working with them now, and we will see more of this happening, extending that capability across patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, patients in a palliative care situation so that we can remotely monitor patients who are better off being treated in -- at home. We're also rolling out Miya Memory there to up to 200 clinicians, which is the mobile EMR capability. And doctors are then using -- accessing data from the electronic medical record and using that on their phones and deploying our clinical decision support capability to help them in the treatment of patients at Wagga Wagga Base Hospital, in particular those patients presenting to ED. We also announced in Q1 an initial 12-month contract for Miya Precision with Sydney Local Health District. They're one of the largest metropolitan health districts in New South Wales. The value of that was -- for that initial 12-month contract just for virtual care was $560,000 in these 12 months. And that will see Miya Precision being implemented to support -- at Sydney Local Health District to support rpavirtual, which is really about enabling clinicians to remotely monitor COVID-19 patients initially who were isolating at home. As we are moving away now from not as many patients in -- certainly in Australia from a COVID perspective, we are also looking -- Sydney is also looking to deploy that to manage patients with chronic conditions that could be treated at home. Certainly, Sydney has recently been indicating that if they had not moved to rpavirtual as an alternative method of delivering health care, they would have needed to build another 900-bed hospital equivalent of RPA to deal with the aging population. So this is really about changing models of care in health care delivery, and we're very much at the forefront of that. So those 2 contracts are strategically important as we believe there's a really significant opportunity to expand the scope of work beyond those initial 12-month contracts. Also, during the quarter, ACT Health, we signed a 2-year renewal in July for their technical support services, valued at $1.3 million, and that's something that we've been -- a service we've been providing to ACT Health for some time. Just know that's separate from the agreement that we have for the support and licensing of our full Miya product suite, which is deployed at ACT, and that was last renewed in 2018. Since July, we've also picked up a further $400,000 in work with ACT Health on top of that in terms of our service delivery work. So that is a very crucial and important customer to us and remain so. Some other contracts that we signed during -- since July. We have additional work with Queensland Health on supporting their referral services directory. That is the solution from our -- that we provide to Queensland Health from our third-party provider, NextGate. And this is continued development and enhancement of that program to continue to grow their integrated referral management system that's deployed across the whole of Queensland. And we also had an extension to a Patientrack contract -- a Patientrack renewal with one of our New Zealand customers. Recently reported that -- about Smartpage success in the U.K. over the last few months. We were pleased to be appointed as a supplier to the NHSX or just -- let's just call it the NHS, GBP 3 million clinical communications procurement framework. I've talked before about how important these frameworks are because they allow us to base -- their lab trust in the U.K. to purchase our solutions without having to go through a separate tender. So you do the work to get on the framework and then customers can call down off that framework, and that's important to us. This procurement framework has been set up by the NHS to phase out pages by the end of 2021, so that GBP 3 million is for the first year of licensing solutions to support that. And this is really -- another really good example of where the U.K. government is committed to modernizing the NHS and achieving digital maturity through setting up these types of frameworks. And off -- straight off the back of that, in Q1, we signed a 5-year Smartpage contract with Lancashire Teaching Trust, and we certainly expect to have further success from this framework over time. During the quarter, we were also appointed to a panel contract by the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, and we are 1 of only 2 suppliers that are able to provide implementation and support services to deploy what's called the Victorian Health Incident Management System or VHIMS to shorten that rather lengthy title. And that -- VHIMS is about improving the quality and consistency of incident data reported by health services, and all health services need to comply with a minimum data set by the end of July 2021 -- or beginning of July 2021. And Alcidion and that one other provider has been appointed to that panel to work with potentially 86 Victorian public health services that have elected to implement a local incident -- instance of the system. Health services can then select the services that they require from a catalog. It covers implementation, onboarding, support, hosting and also development service options. Of course, Alcidion will be required to sell to these agencies our capabilities ahead of the other company. But to give you an example of the value that this contract could bring, so one medium health -- medium-sized agency would end up paying around $200,000 in implementation fees and $55,000 per annum in support fees. So that is a good opportunity for Alcidion in the Victorian market. Also in the quarter, we continued investing and evolving Miya Precision. We evolved the product marketing and positioning to better align with the way customers who are implementing digital health solutions. And so the full product offering is now fully integrated, of course, and we brand it all under Miya Precision as a flagship product, and it has 16 individual modules underneath that, which can be purchased according to customer needs. And Patientrack falls within that as we go forward. And accompanying that rebranding was several marketing initiatives that were very much focused on the U.K. and introducing the Miya Precision capabilities to the U.K. market, and we've had some really good response from that. A couple of things that I think we're very proud of as well. Earlier this month, Alcidion was recognized by a judging panel from the Australian Financial Review as #5 in the top 5 innovative technology companies in Australia for our work with Miya Precision. We're very proud of this achievement and the recognition for the work our staff are doing to bring innovation to health care. And this work was then further recognized last week by the Federal Member for Higgins, Dr. Katie Allen, on the floor of federal parliament, where she recognized the work that Alcidion has been doing and how important that will be. So there's no doubt the work that we do is getting recognized, and there's a growing awareness of what Alcidion is looking to contribute to changing health care delivery and transforming it from a technology perspective. And then a quick look at the cash flows for the quarter. We reported operating cash receipts in Q1 of $6.4 million. Comparing that year-on-year, that represents a 34% increase against the same quarter, Q1 for FY '20. Overall, there was a net cash outflow of $1.2 million. And at the 30th of September, our cash reserves remained strong at $14.7 million. So the operating cash flows during the quarter did increase to $7.5 million, and that is in line with our expectations. And as we've highlighted previously, it's made up of a number of things. Payments that contributed to that were larger-than-normal payments to resold product -- third-party product suppliers, where we are reselling a product into this market as well as this is the quarter in which annual bonuses are paid to executives and staff. And also, as previously outlined, it is in line with continued investments we're making to scale up the business, though that investment for scale, as I've said before, will even out and we will hit our planned investment in the coming quarters. We have the full sales team now recruited, and we will start to see those -- that cost base stabilize. Before I move on to questions, I'd just like to give a few final comments on our outlook for FY '21. Off the back of a strong start to the financial year, we're really confident this pickup in momentum is going to continue. It's a very exciting time for Alcidion. We are in the investment phase but coming out of it. But what's really important is that we're starting to see early indicators that the investments we've carried out to date are paying off. We aim to complete that, as I said, in FY '21. And as we do so, we'll see the cost base stabilize and the revenue growth accelerate. The interest in the product, the pipeline, it's very exciting to see that from across all our territories, particularly interest in the U.K., where, as I've talked about before, they have a mixed approach to digital health in that they are often looking at a best-of-breed initiative. And again, anyone who wants to understand our proposition to the U.K. market and how exciting that is, please have a look at the webinar that we conducted. It can be found at our website, and you will there hear one of our customers, Neil Perry, who made up digital transformation and innovation at Dartford, talk about why they chose Alcidion. Although the current pandemic still poses some challenges in the markets, we're firmly of the belief now that the situation in health care frontline is starting to stabilize as hospitals and health care providers are well equipped and they pretty well got a handle on what they need to do to treat and manage this situation. So we entered the second quarter with a rebranded Miya Precision product offering that aligns with how our health care providers are implementing health solutions. This evolution in our Miya Precision suite, together with the U.K. marketing activities undertaking in the first quarter, bode really well for the FY '21 financial year. We've got a strong pipeline. We've got increasing momentum around what we offer in health care. And I am very much looking forward to keeping you updated on our progress as we head towards the half year as well. This concludes our business update for Q1. Certainly now like to welcome any questions that you may have. I'll stop sharing the screen, and then I can see a bit better what's going on. So I'm going to let -- is it Ky or Sam taking the questions?
Thanks. We've got about 15 minutes or so for questions. So my first question, Kate, that's been submitted by the audience is do you see a role for Alcidion in emerging health platform initiatives such as New South Wales ehealth's single patient digital record initiative or the like?
Thanks. Good question. Obviously, New South Wales has got a few things going on at the moment around what they're doing. They've got a panel contract that is currently out for virtual care. And many of you will know what we're doing at both Murrumbidgee and Sydney LHD is for virtual care. In terms of the single patient digital record from New South Wales, that is an expression of interest. They're testing the market for what is out there and what is possible. I don't think they've settled 100% on exactly what they're looking for, but we will certainly be putting forward some of our capabilities as being able to address some of the areas of interest that New South Wales has put out in that expression of interest. That's a process. It's probably going to take a year more to work its way through. And so at the moment, we're very focused on the virtual care environment.
Okay. My next question is the initial stages of COVID have clearly had an impact on the speed at which hospitals can enter into contracts. Has this created a backlog which you now anticipate will begin to be cleared? And will the U.K.'s second wave have an impact?
Thanks for that. Firstly, yes to the first part of the question in the sense that, as I indicated through the update, we have -- we did see a situation where initially, both in Australia and the U.K., health care institutions kind of went into bunker mode while they needed to sort out how they were going to deal with the pandemic and respond to patients. Now as we've come through a second wave, and we know that those systems are well in place, people know how to respond, we're seeing quite a different reaction in the U.K. this time than we did last time. So we are still fully engaged with customers in the U.K. and still working through pipeline opportunities that have come to us post COVID and certainly, a number of qualified pipeline opportunities that came as a result of the marketing initiatives that we've held during this quarter. So in terms of -- what's the second part of that question? That was first part. What was the second part, sorry? It was around...
The impact of the second wave.
No, I touched on that as well. Yes. So I think the second wave, yes, of course, there are parts of the health care system that is distracted onto that, but we are still seeing engagement and activity across the board. Victoria has been a little bit quiet, obviously, in terms of the hospitals, but we're now engaging with them here as well as we've got such a reduced number of cases in hospitals in Victoria as well. So I think we've got a handle -- I think the health care system has gotten much more of a handle on the pandemic, and we're starting to see significantly increased engagement as a result.
Okay. Our next question is the share prices trended lower in the last 6 months. What has impacted Alcidion's share price?
I always find these questions difficult to answer because I really don't -- what my role and the company's role is very much around delivering -- having a strategic plan, responding to that, delivering -- laying that plan out for our shareholders and delivering into it, and that's absolutely what we've been focused on. I believe that the quarterlies and the announcements we've been making to the market are in line with what we set out with our plan. We are in a growth phase. We are demonstrating that, that growth is coming. Yes, there might have been a couple of hiccups from a COVID perspective, and perhaps that's impacted on the share price. But for me, it's -- the share price act -- the share market acts independent of the company as it should. And it's not always easy for me to comment on where are shareholders coming from in terms of what they do with the price. I'm very confident in what we are doing. I'm very confident in the plan we have put forward, and I'm very confident in our company executing it.
Thanks, Kate. Our next question is how is the sales pipeline shaping up over the rest of FY '21?
I mean, I think as I've already touched on, we're very happy with the growth in the pipeline. It is -- and as I've said before, I think I might have mentioned on previous ones that the pipeline is growing. It is growing significantly, and we have -- partly, that's a response to the team that we have on the ground. We have increasing numbers. We have increasing capabilities, people that have come to us that are from companies where they have significant connections and relationships. Take -- getting our webinar message out through the U.K. has, again, really strengthened the pipeline. As everybody knows, you've probably heard me mention the sales cycle. If you are selling something like Miya Precision, which is going to touch every component of a hospital or health service or trust, it takes time from the inception, from the initial engagement to move that through the pipeline. They are very significant contracts, and when they land, they obviously have a great impact. One of the benefits though of Alcidion is, as evidenced from our results in this quarterly, we can have strong growth. We have strong revenue growth even when it isn't only reliant on one great big Miya Precision contract and that we steadily are building that revenue pipeline and steadily building that recurring revenue off the back of it.
Thanks. Our next question is, is there any feedback regarding the extension of the initial 12-month contracts for both Sydney LHD and Murrumbidgee?
So Murrumbidgee has a 12-month contract up until the end of December, and Sydney's is through until the end of June. So we are working with those customers. Murrumbidgee is actually live, so we are working with them around what a contract extension looks like. Sydney LHD is still working through implementation. We're hoping to see them live in December. They'll then use it for a period of a few months, and then we'll talk to them about those contract extensions.
Thanks. New South Wales Health has been making good progress on the IoT patient vitals data digitization. Is this interesting to us?
Yes. So when you hear me talk about the virtual care accelerator panel from New South Wales Health, that is what this is all about. So they are going to market to have a panel very similar to the one I mentioned around New South -- sorry, the U.K. NHS trusts, where they've got a panel contract that you get on that panel, then people can purchase components of their virtual care solution from you. So yes, we will be responding to that and hope to be on that panel. The work we're doing at Murrumbidgee is -- and I think I talked people through that in a little bit more detail on the half year presentation, where we're drawing together the information or the device data. So the armbands that patients are wearing that have got their vital signs, data being constantly monitored, we're drawing that into the Miya Precision platform. We're integrating that data in our platform with the electronic medical record data. So anything we know about the patient from the hospital, all their laboratory tests, all their medications as well as patient-entered data, data which can be met -- entered by their own phone app, and we're bringing that all together so that people can see, from a virtual care perspective, what is going on with that patient. So we are very much part of the New South Wales Health activity around that.
Thanks. Has COVID been the driver for more remote provision than health care-led opportunities for ALC?
Most definitely, absolutely. But whilst I think rpa and Sydney LHD were aware of Alcidion before, COVID came along and the opportunities that we had to work with them from an innovation perspective, the capabilities that we were able to very quickly implement into the platform from a dashboard perspective and integration perspective has created opportunities for us. And we are seeing interest in those, particularly across Australia.
Thank you. Could you please explain the operation of the referral services directory and opportunities outside Queensland?
So about 2 years ago, Queensland decided to create an integrated referral management system that takes 4 different companies' components that allows general practitioners, remote from specialists and hospitals, to look for referrals for their patients based on the waiting time of particular specialties, location, where they're geographically met. And we put forward the referral service directory, which is actually the provider index, the thing that matches all the doctors because -- I don't know if many of you know that doctors have multiple Medicare service provider numbers depending on where they're treating a patient. So that has been implemented and is live and is being used across Queensland. We know other states in Australia are looking at similar programs. So certainly, were they to come up and go to market, we continue working with NextGate and putting forward that solution if it comes to market.
Thank you. Our next question is the total contract value for FY '21 was $14.7 million. Does that mean you need to win an additional $7 million of contracts in the rest of FY '21 to get to similar levels? So that might be for FY '20.
So at the current point, at the end of the first quarter, we have contracted $14.7 million that we expect to deliver in this year, that is we'll meet the project milestones and so forth. And we will continue, obviously, to continue to sell and sign up new business and deliver it within this area. So if you're talking about similar levels as in -- if we added another $7 million, then that would be $21.7 million, would be the revenue for FY '21. So it's really a matter of how much contract -- additional sales we make and how much of that can be recognized as being revenue in FY '21. And that would be around -- depending on what we're selling, it's selling software and implementing it. It is the services associated with implementing our software. And then it's new services contracts like the RSD work, like the ACT Health work, which generally we sign up and deliver within the current financial year if it's this early. Now obviously, if we sign it up midway through Q4, then generally, that might be recognized into the next financial year.
Thank you. Can you break down the tender process that is undertaken with the sales team in the U.K.? Does that differ from here in Australia?
It actually does often differ. We see more -- we see more need for a full tender process in Australia. Because in -- what they've done in the U.K. is these framework contracts, and there are many, many frameworks. There are also third-party providers that have actually got onto those frameworks who don't necessarily have software and you can go through those providers. But we -- our aim is to get on to as many of the frameworks that are as relevant to us. Once you've done that, if you then engage with your customer and they want to buy your solution, they can buy from that framework. So it is a little bit different and it shortens the process. It means that to get on the framework, you go through a lot of the questions and checks to see that what you said the solution does, it does and you're financially stable and so forth. But once you are there, if someone wishes to buy your solution, they can do it through that without necessarily having to go to a detailed tender.
Great. Thank you. Can you outline some of the impacts and outcomes you are seeing with new customers? How long, how quickly are they seeing their return on investment?
Well, I mean, that completely depends obviously on what they've purchased. If you see someone implement -- East Lanc's teaching buy Smartpage from us. They buy it in October. They could be live in November and using the solution for the winter break. So that's been a real drive for a lot of the U.K. sites that are interested in Smartpage. They want to get communications going. They want to stop having to go through pages and phones because not only from a COVID perspective but also, they're still anticipating they're going to have winter flu season. So really quick return on investment there. In terms of Murrumbidgee, again, worked very closely with them to get some early wins on the board. Doctors in the ED were immediately -- from the moment that we actually turned on Miya Memory, they wanted more alerts, more indicators of patients' deterioration, patient frailty, patient risk factors. So those are the sort of things that we can see from a Miya Precision perspective in a short, sharp innovation like we did there in 3 to 4 months. More likely, in a Miya Precision deployment, you're looking at sort of a 6- to 9-month implementation, depending on how much data we're bringing into the system. So it really does depend on what they're implementing from us. But our aim is always to work with the customer to get early wins really quickly, to get the clinicians, the doctors, nurses and allied health professionals really getting benefit from the solution right upfront because then you have really good adoption and you continue to layer in capabilities over time.
Great. Just a couple of more questions. Are you continuing to invest in product development? What new products could we anticipate?
We are. As a matter of fact, one of the products that we have just released into a U.K. customer is eNoting and natural language processing. So we are now looking at being able to do all of the doctors' documentation, not just doctors but nurses and allied health documentation, not only on a desktop but also from the mobile Miya Memory. And we're making that very easy to use, and it is all about how we engage doctors and nurses to be able to make their -- what they do more simple, more streamlined. We're also adding in a whole lot of knowledge base and content around that. So it's a really exciting part of it. It was always mapped out within Miya Precision, but that's now going into Dartford as the first implementation of that. So we will continue to enhance and develop that platform and fill out the capabilities so that we are truly providing an alternative from a digital health perspective to what some of our customers have maybe been used to in the last 10 to 15 years in terms of capabilities. We are really focused on making sure that the user, the clinician, doctor, nurse, whomever is getting the most that they can out of our platform. We want to make the delivery of health care easier, whether you're at the bed side or whether you're doing it in a virtual sense for a hospital in the home. If you make it easier from a doctor's and a clinician's perspective to treat patients, then the return on investment is absolutely there, and it's very easy to demonstrate.
Great. Thank you. Could you tell us how your acquisition strategy is progressing?
We continue to work through that. Obviously, in terms of acquisition interest, we were certainly interested in looking at how we might expand our presence and capability in the U.K., which we obviously see as a very large and growing market. COVID and lack of travel and distraction has slowed some of that down, but we are certainly still very much interested in pursuing the acquisition strategy. We know that we can do this well. We know what's important to us and strategic for us, and it's just a matter of finding the right companies to align with what we're doing.
Okay. And I think our final question is, in the U.K. and Australia, who are Alcidion's major competitors?
Again, it's always this question of it depends. But I think I've probably covered this off a few times before and that it is different in Australia and New Zealand and it is different depending on what it is the customer is trying to solve -- what problem they're trying to solve. Where we're coming up to alternatives -- someone who was looking at alternative electronic medical record, obviously, some of the big players like Cerner and Epic. But the reality is our proposition around them is generally here in Australia to sit on top of those types of EMR solutions, which we are doing in Murrumbidgee and Sydney LHD. In terms of particular levels of capability, maybe an alternative EMR in the private sector, we might come up against Telstra Health in Australia. In the U.K., some of the companies that we would compete against from an alternative EMR perspective might be Nervecentre or a company called System C. But the reality of what we're doing with Miya Precision where we are sitting on top of an existing capability, where we are making use of the investment that's been made in digital health care and getting all that data off paper into a digital format and us sitting on top and drawing on that data and using it for algorithms, for artificial intelligence or augmented intelligence as we like to refer to it, that is a fairly unique position, especially given our focus on the user interface and engaging with doctors and nurses. So I don't believe there's anyone else that has created that capability from an orchestration layer perspective. We're calling that bringing together data, orchestrating care and then pushing it out to our caregivers on their phones or in tablets in a way that actually supports the way they deliver care and the models of care that health is now interested in deploying.
Great. Thanks, Kate. That brings the questions to a close. I'll just hand over to you for final remarks.
Thank you all very much. And again, thank you for your continued support. On behalf of the Alcidion Board and management, I really want to thank you for the support that you show us. We are very excited about the opportunity that's ahead of us. This quarter has been very good for us in terms of coming out of that COVID situation where engaging with our customers was a bit more challenging. And we're starting to see that growth in the pipeline, that increased engagement with our customers, and I've got a very energized sales and marketing team. Just a reminder that the company's AGM will be held as a virtual event on Thursday, the 19th of November at 2:00 p.m. Australian Eastern daylight savings time, and the notice of the meeting can be found on the ASX. We look forward to providing further updates throughout the quarter. And I thank you very much for your time today.