AVIA Health Informatics guardedly optimistic after transformational full year

AVIA Health Informatics (LON:AVIA) gave a guardedly optimistic assessment of prospects after a transformational, but loss-making year.

The shortfall widened £90,000 to £320,000 for year ended March 31 2010 on revenues of £1.75 million.  What the results fail to reflect is the upheaval as the group bought Plain Software, moved from PLUS Markets to AIM and raised £1.19 million.

The group also invested £400,000 in developing its suite of Odyssey health diagnosis products.
Chairman Barry Giddings said: "The board sees a move away in the current financial year from the company’s dependence on the UK market to major international growth markets, specifically emerging markets in the Far East, the Americas and elsewhere.

"Our product development resource is focused on meeting the customers’ needs in these markets. We also expect to expand our cost effective 'route to market' strategy of working with value added partners, resellers and distributors into these new developing market areas.

"I am excited by the potential for the company in overseas markets and remain cautiously optimistic about the current financial year due to the financial pressures on its customer base in the UK market," Giddings said.

The Odyssey system is currently available in five languages – English, German, French, Italian and Dutch.

The plan  is to soon make it available in Mandarin, the business language of China, Spanish, Portuguese and “possibly Russian", Giddings revealed.

This will make the Odyssey platform a truly international product.

Currently the company has two strategic partners – one in the US, the other in Asia.

By the end of next year, Giddings predicts the number of partnerships will be in double figures, ensuring in the process that the group is profitable.

The products Avia sells under the Odyssey brand promise to revolutionise the way people receive health advice. They can be used for self-assessment on a touch screen device, or accessed via the internet by clinicians working over the telephone or directly with the patient. 

Avia’s high end database has been deployed by a local ambulance service to identify the most urgent cases and its software is also being utilised by receptionists and nurses in primary care centres.

The programmes are based on the pioneering work of leading academic Professor Jeremy Dale, who is a director of Avia, a major shareholder and one of the original founders of Plain.

The software powered the NHS Direct helpline until 2000, when the contract was awarded to Axa Assistance and MDS International.

The products rely on a Bayesian, or statistics-based system of questions and answers that mimics human reasoning processes. Unlike decision support programmes which use algorithms, this is intended to make Odyssey much more intuitive to use.

Its creators say that patient assessments with Odyssey are faster and safer. They also cut down unnecessary hospital referrals and treatment costs. 

MobileAssess is the latest addition to the Odyssey stable. And the first product in the range is a programme called Odyssey MarineAssess, which is specifically targeted at global cargo shipping companies.

It is designed to save considerable costs associated with diverting or evacuating of a vessel in the event of injury to or illness of a crew member.

Under Giddings’ chairmanship the Avia developers have taken what used to be a very clunky system and made it fit for the internet era.

It can be downloaded or stored remotely using cloud-based computing. Customers don’t even need an always-on connection to the net, which is helpful for users in remote or developing parts of the world.

Not just this, the Odyssey system can be sliced, diced and served up in any form you want it – from the very basic suite you might get as a mobile app, to the more complex, all singing, all dancing service provided to  insurance call centres.