All posts by Oliver Haill

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

On the Front Line of the Quest to Enhance Healthcare System Efficiency

It depends on whom you ask, but healthcare in most countries feels, if not broken, then at the very least in critical condition. In Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and beyond, our medical ecosystems are strained by bureaucracy, old ways of working, inflation, workforce shortages, and ageing patient populations.

The promise of technology and artificial intelligence has loomed for years as a potential remedy. Social distancing measures imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst, accelerating the adoption of digital tools to keep patients out of emergency rooms.

There have been meaningful advances before and since, from virtual triage to AI-powered symptom checkers, but doctors and healthcare organizations remain hungry for tools that save time and resources.

Treatment.com AI (CSE:TRUE) is an emerging Canadian company that has developed an AI platform to do just this, and its scope is nothing if not impressive.

The Vancouver-based team believes it has built one of the most robust, clinically grounded diagnostic AI tools on the market, with clinically validated content and proprietary algorithms being the platform’s key differentiators.

Fuelling the company’s diagnostic engine is what Treatment.com AI calls the Global Library of Medicine (GLM), which was built over the course of more than seven years, drawing on more than 40,000 hours of clinical expertise and input from hundreds of doctors globally.

This means that unlike generic large language models (LLMs), which scrape unverified information from the internet, the Treatment.com AI engine is designed to minimize bias, making it a more reliable and adaptive tool for healthcare.

“The GLM has the ability to ‘think like a doctor’ and diagnose and ask questions in the most logical and necessary way regarding more than 1,000 diseases among the most common ones you’d see in a clinic or a hospital,” says Treatment.com AI Chief Executive Officer Dr. Essam Hamza, a family doctor turned technology entrepreneur who joined the company in late 2023. Hamza adds that the GLM knowledge base encompasses “over 15,000 symptoms and risk factors.”

One application of the platform that the company believes will be attractive for clinics and hospitals is an AI assistant (either through voice or text) that takes calls from patients and guides them through a structured diagnostic conversation. Triaging symptoms, suggesting assessments, and assisting with diagnosis are all parts of the process, as well as signalling possible red flags early. It can take a medical note and, where necessary, communicate with electronic medical record systems. 

The GLM is designed to complement, rather than replace, healthcare professionals. It does not issue its diagnosis to the patient but rather conveys the information to a licensed practitioner, which makes follow-up quicker and minimizes risk and associated potential liability as compared to a consumer-facing-only product.

Interestingly, Hamza originally got to know the company as an investor. “I really loved the technology, but the commercial side was missing, and I could see the potential,” he explains.

Under his lead, Treatment.com AI has moved away from its early direct-to-consumer model and is now focused on embedding its technology in hospitals, health systems, and insurers in more of a “B2B2C” model.

Other changes included adding Chief Financial Officer David Worner, who brings technology industry and M&A experience, and Chief Operating Officer Richard Atkins, who spearheaded sales for CloudMD and before that was at Health Navigator, which Amazon acquired to launch Amazon Care.

Even with these enhancements, Hamza acknowledges that Treatment.com AI is not the only entity betting that AI can help solve inefficiencies in the global healthcare ecosystem. He is thus making acquisitions to provide proof that the company’s AI performs in the real world and also to broaden the company’s commercial footprint.

The first addition, announced in January of this year, was Alea Health, which has a proprietary online therapy platform that leverages AI-driven tools to address mental health challenges. The platform incorporates conversational AI and voice technology to optimize patient intake and follow-up processes, thereby reducing administrative burdens and enhancing patient engagement. The technology and skills within the team will be utilized across the Treatment.com AI group.

The latest addition to Treatment.com AI, coming aboard in April, is Rocket Doctor, a fast-growing platform for patients to access care and MDs to launch their own practices largely virtually, now with hybridized in-person models across North America.

Founded by Toronto-based emergency physician Dr. William Cherniak, Rocket Doctor has helped empower over 300 MDs to provide care to over 600,000 patient visits across North America. Cherniak calls it a “Shopify for doctors” and says it caters to both urban and underserved rural patients in Canada and the U.S.

“We’re not just a virtual walk-in clinic,” says Cherniak. “We’re leveraging the most advanced technology to empower physicians to practice independently, integrating family medicine, primary, specialty, as well as urgent care, keeping hundreds of thousands of people out of hospital.”

For Hamza, Rocket Doctor was both a strategic fit and one generating revenue. “We’re treating Rocket Doctor almost as a customer. It’s a proof of concept for our AI,” Hamza says. “It allows us to optimize performance at scale and also help improve the bottom line.”

It also aligns with Treatment.com AI’s commercial approach. “We don’t go door to door to sell to individual doctors,” says Hamza. “We’re at the point now where we’re ready and looking to sign contracts with healthcare organizations, insurers – anyone with thousands of doctors or millions of patients. Having built a robust cloud-based solution and graduating as one of only two Canadian start-ups in Google’s Inaugural AI First Accelerator, Rocket Doctor has the infrastructure and customer base that can use our AI technology and show it works.”

Rocket Doctor has contracts with individual physicians and hospitals across Canada, as well as in California, New York, and Maryland, working with managed care plans and independent physician associations. In January, it executed a contract to go in-network with a 450,000-member managed care plan of Medicaid in California. In March, it was awarded a new clinical contract with its partner EngageWell IPA for a US$1 million five-year CVS Health Foundation grant, providing care to seniors for cardiovascular, cognitive, and mental health.

“Rocket Doctor is not just for proof of concept. I like them as a company, and they’re growing well independently and have a great brand,” says Hamza. “We’re not changing that platform at all. We’re going to add fuel to the fire of that growth, make some introductions to improve the top line, and use our technology to try and help the bottom line too.” 

Treatment.com AI is also building out a suite of complementary products using its core AI engine. These include a pharmacy triage system and a medical education tool, which is already in use at the University of Minnesota.

“We’re not a tech roll-up,” Hamza says. “We’ll only acquire companies that truly complement our strategy. If we buy something, it’s because we believe it adds a critical piece we don’t already have.”

Rocket Doctor is rapidly growing meaningful software as a service (SaaS) revenue, with gross margins near the high end of the 80% range, according to Hamza, who notes a path to doubling revenue in the first year, building on its 88% year-on-year increase in 2024. Revenue recognition for Treatment.com AI from the Rocket Doctor subsidiary is expected to begin in the second quarter, ending August 31.

“We’re moving like we’re a $100 million Annual Recurring Review (ARR) company and growing rapidly into those clothes,” he says.

If Treatment.com AI can continue its progress and keep turning clinical credibility into commercial contracts, the company will deliver on its mission to improve access for patients, reduce administrative overhead for healthcare professionals, and enable providers to deliver more efficient and profitable healthcare systems.

This story was featured in Canadian Securities Exchange Magazine.

Learn more about Treatment.com AI at https://www.treatment.com/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

The Right Blend of Production and Exploration Brings a Peruvian Mine Back to Life

When the founders of Kuya Silver (CSE:KUYA) first came across the Bethania Mine in the Peruvian Andes, the idle site brought to mind assets that some of the world’s top silver companies had put into production when they were small and growing.

One of those founders, now Kuya President and Chief Executive Officer David Stein, saw the potential right away, drawing on nine years of experience as a Bay Street mining analyst and seven years in private equity.

Knowledge of what investors want to see in a successful company gave Stein the confidence to make the acquisition of Bethania in 2017 and build assets around the flagship project to achieve an attractive corporate profile.

Bethania was on care and maintenance when Stein and Christian Aramayo, Kuya Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, first encountered it. At the time, the mine was owned by a Peruvian family and had just two shareholders.

“What I liked about Bethania was that it really reminded me of the early days of some of the big silver mining companies, like First Majestic, which started in Mexico with a single mine,” says Stein, who recalls being the first analyst to cover First Majestic in the early 2000s. 

“So, I knew what kind of business model and value could be created with a high-grade silver mine like this. And you had all the hallmarks of a great mine, including good grades, which mean your costs are going to be low, and tremendous exploration potential. The previous owners did not do any real exploration – they were just following veins that are very obviously open.”

Stein and Aramayo sensed that modern exploration techniques had a high chance of proving up a significant deposit at the property and that the exploration could take place in tandem with production. 

“In my view, the best junior mining companies give the market two things: production growth and resource growth, at the same time ideally,” says Stein. “Those are the companies that will outperform their peers, and I felt like Bethania had the opportunity to do that by starting up production and then growing it incrementally, with exploration potentially offering huge resource upside.”

A lot of the needed infrastructure was already in place. And Peru, of course, is a country where many of the world’s top mining companies run successful operations.

Following an initial investment and earn-in deal as a private company, funded mainly by Stein, Kuya went public and raised enough money to buy all of the shares of Bethania’s Peruvian owners at the end of 2020, giving Kuya 100% ownership.

The company added to its local land position soon after, with the project eventually reaching a total of 4,300 hectares. The mine itself sits on about 15 hectares, says Stein. “It’s only a tiny portion of this huge land package that has not been explored by drilling.”

Under Kuya’s control, Bethania has transitioned from sitting dormant to once again being in production, with operations restarted in May of this year and the first sale of silver-lead concentrate completed in October.

While Kuya is leveraging a toll milling model to process its ore, it has all the permits it needs to establish its own mill. A company-owned mill will likely have to wait until 2027, though, as Kuya first intends to build up its production rate and operating cash flow.

As an initial target, Stein and Aramayo aim to increase throughput to 350 tonnes per day.

Stein expects that current all-in sustaining costs will be around US$15 per ounce factoring in the cost for toll milling. This is higher than the sub-$10 estimate in Bethania’s preliminary economic assessment (PEA), but with silver prices north of $30, there’s plenty of headroom.

“When we hit our target run rate, you’re looking at 1.5 million ounces of silver production per year and some pretty meaningful cash flow,” says Stein. “It’s looking in the order of almost US$2 million a month at current silver prices.”

Plans call for allocating cash flow from mining sales to growing the deposit via exploration.

In addition to the 4,000-plus hectare site in the Andes, Kuya has also been building a potential district-size asset in Northern Ontario, which it calls the Silver Kings Project.

Here, the company has 13,000 hectares located in one of Ontario’s most prolific silver mining camps, near the historic mining town of Cobalt.

“My experience when I was an analyst was that the market is always looking for growth,” says Stein. “And if you don’t have it now, you have to buy it later and usually pay more for it. Silver Kings is an attractive risk-return for us in that sense.”

Exploration remains central to Kuya’s growth story with so little of Bethania explored to date, and Silver Kings being an earlier stage project.

While the market is not attributing significant value to the Ontario asset yet, the team made the acquisition and has consolidated more land because they see high-grade silver potential.

Geologically, Silver Kings is very different from Bethania, right down to the by-products, which in Ontario would include cobalt.

The district has seen little to no silver exploration for over 40 years, but Kuya’s geologists have identified dozens of targets.

And because it is in Canada, Kuya can minimize dilution by taking advantage of flow-through financing to fund exploration.

“I feel like it’s always a good idea to line up a company’s next growth opportunity,” says Stein. 

“As we grow in Peru with Bethania for the next five years, people will start to wonder what’s next, and the nice thing is we already have the next thing potentially with the Ontario project.”

As for growing Bethania, the initial focus is enlarging the resource. There has only ever been drilling to a depth of about 200 metres from surface, and veins are open both at depth and along strike.

Exploration drilling will initially focus on three nearby zones with historical mining activity.

“We feel these have the potential to add significant tonnage in the future,” the CEO says, adding that Kuya could conduct US$20 million to US$30 million in exploration in the district over the next several years “and really show that there’s a much bigger project there.” 

If current plans come to fruition, there should be enough money in the bank to start exploration in the second quarter of 2025.

“Once we start, the drills will never stop. We’ll keep drilling and exploring these various targets for many years to come,” explains Stein.

And building a mill in a few years would lower costs and risk, improve recoveries and allow expansion beyond 350 tonnes per day.

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices will also be incorporated in Bethania’s expansion.

As an underground mine, Stein says Bethania’s environmental footprint is relatively small, while the mill has been designed to recycle water and comes with plans to connect to Peru’s hydroelectric grid for clean energy.

On the social side, Kuya maintains strong ties with the local community, providing jobs and sharing economic benefits. “The community has been very supportive,” Stein notes.

With silver prices showing upward momentum, rising from US$23 per ounce at the start of 2024 to around US$30 lately, Kuya could benefit from market dynamics as well as its own actions. 

“If silver prices rise to $50 or $60, the upside is enormous,” Stein concludes.

This story was featured in Canadian Securities Exchange Magazine.

Learn more about Kuya Silver at https://www.kuyasilver.com/.

CSE Issuer Stories, Magazine

Savvy Business Model Leverages North America’s Race to Build Renewable Energy

While Europe gets much of the credit for leading the global push to adopt renewable energy, the United States and Canada are actually among the world’s top power producers from clean sources, thanks in large part to an abundant water supply for hydroelectric stations.

But solar and wind feature more prominently than most people probably realize, particularly on a total output basis in the United States. In both countries, multiple forms of renewable energy play a role in shaping the supply profile for regional power grids.

The stage is thus set for viable new renewable projects to help North America meet its increasing need for electricity, and NU E Power (CSE:NUE) is playing a role with an early focus on solar opportunities in Alberta.

NU E Chief Financial Officer John Newman spoke with Canadian Securities Exchange Magazine in mid-September about Canada’s renewable energy market, the company’s business model and near-term plans for growth.

Let’s begin with a look at why NU E Power was first established.

NU E was founded in 2021 by Devon Sandford, an electrician who specializes in the construction of utility-scale solar facilities and is also an entrepreneur. His vision was to develop a solar-to-hydrogen model, which was the initial business plan of the company. Back when we were looking for the capital to develop these projects, we were introduced to Low Carbon out of the U.K. and were able to strike what I think is a very unique joint venture with them.

Can you tell us how the joint venture with Low Carbon Investment Management works?

NU E is responsible for sourcing and developing solar projects in North America. We source the projects, we move through the regulatory process to get approval, and Low Carbon is responsible for funding all of the construction and development costs.

Once it gets to the investment decision date, we undertake a third-party valuation and the development is sold by the joint venture to a specific special purpose vehicle (SPV) set up for the purpose of constructing and operating the solar farm. 

At the end of the day, NU E ends up with a 25% share of each SPV. So, for us, it’s basically a free carry on 25% interest in the solar farm. It’s a very unique situation and that’s something we want investors to understand – that this is really a very attractive venture for us as a company.

How long does the process take from beginning to end?

It’s a fairly lengthy regulatory process; from start to finish it can be 12 to 18 months. We source access points into the grid, we source available land, and then once we find suitable locations, we commence the regulatory process. We have a couple of developers on staff and Low Carbon pays 100% of their costs, as well as some of the management costs, and they basically pay 50% of our general and administrative expenses, excluding any kind of public costs and things like that.

Tell us about the joint venture’s first project.

Lethbridge One is an 8.75 MWac (MWac denotes nameplate capacity for a solar power facility) project that should go live this month. The cash flow generated from this project will be used to pay down the financing costs, so in terms of cash flow directly to NU E, it is expected to be $10.4 million over the next two years, meaning 2025 and 2026. Essentially, we’re building asset value at this stage.

As we look to the future, we will see cash flow coming from the sale of developments from the joint venture to the specific operating vehicles that are set up to construct and operate solar farms.

What’s coming up after Lethbridge One?

We’ve got four other projects in the development pipeline, around 500  megawatts worth that are in various stages of regulatory approval. That pipeline is probably worth $750 million to $1 billion of investment into Canada before taking into account investment tax credits or other incentives that the government has put in place to encourage renewable energy development.

Lethbridge One is quite small, but it was good for both Low Carbon and NU E to embark on a project like this just to understand the process. I think we’ve got all of that stuff ironed out, and we’re looking to much larger projects.

Can you talk about the energy market in Canada, the appeal for investors and what levels of government support and subsidies there are?

Our primary focus in Canada is Alberta. We have probably the most sunshine per year of anywhere in the country, so it’s an ideal place for solar farm developments. The preference at this stage is to operate in Alberta because it’s a deregulated market too.

Once you go through the approval process you can access the grid. What I think makes the renewable energy space ultimately attractive for investors is that you’ve got a lot of support from the government, both federally and provincially, in the form of investment tax credits on capital expenditures on renewable projects. For example, if we’re spending $1 billion, we could see up to $300 million of investment tax credits, so it’s a significant impact on project economics.

Another incentive is that Canada is no different than other countries in imposing a carbon tax, which is currently around $80 a ton and I think rising to $170 a ton by 2030, so there’s a big incentive for people to utilize renewable energy.

And when it comes to energy pricing, Alberta is a deregulated market and the price does go up and down, so we look to try and put in place power purchase agreements where we can establish an economic price for our power, which helps with financing and all sorts of things surrounding project economics. We’re also looking at the possibility of putting in place battery storage, so you can store energy and then release it into the grid when the prices are right. 

Having gone through the regulatory process once, what’s the expected timeline for the rest of the pipeline?

Alberta went through a bit of a moratorium on approving new power projects that started last year and ended earlier this year. That’s delayed the approval process and seen some new rules around renewable energy put in place. So, it has impacted the timing to some extent, but I believe in the next 12 to 18 months that we will have approval on certainly the next two projects, Lethbridge Two and Lethbridge Three, which is around 150 megawatts of solar. 

Does working with a U.K. renewable energy company set you apart in Canada?

Low Carbon is a significant player in the renewable market in the U.K. and Europe, so it gives us credibility that they’ve chosen to work with us and are prepared to operate the joint venture under the terms we have, which I think are very favourable to us. And I think it’s positive not only that we have a funding partner but also that they’re a well-recognized player in the renewable sector.

Is there opportunity for NU E to expand outside of the Low Carbon deal?

The joint venture is fairly well defined, and if there are projects that we bring to the table that they’re not interested in then we have the ability to pursue those opportunities ourselves.

We do have a couple of opportunities that we’re working on outside of the Low Carbon deal. The original business plan behind NU E was the production of green hydrogen through solar energy and that remains one of our key targets. We’ve actually just acquired 49% of Diloo Energy, a majority Indigenous-owned and -operated green hydrogen developer in Canada. We need to look as well at opportunities that will generate cash flow in the nearer term.

This story was featured in Canadian Securities Exchange Magazine.

Learn more about NU E Power https://www.nu-ecorp.com/.