|
||
 |
Boardroom |  |
|
||
 |
MetAlert |  |
In The Boardroom With...
Patrick Bertagna
Chief Executive Officer
MetAlert (formerly GTX Corp)
OTC: MLRT
UPDATED December 1, 2022
One Company Is Set To Pioneer Technology For The Senior Health Care Market—MetAlert
UPDATED November 15, 2022
MetAlert Distributor Red Dot Alerts Launches Media Campaign for 4G GPS SmartSole Across Canada
UPDATED October 25, 2022
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thank you for joining us again today, Patrick. We read with great interest this recent article in Times Now, “Families are attaching Apple AirTags to their loved ones who have dementia - in case they wander off”.
It seems to us that this market is growing exponentially, worldwide, and that the MetAlert solution offers several important technological competitive advantages vs. the limitations of the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) AirTags. Your thoughts on this, Patrick, care to do a deep dive on this issue?
Patrick Bertagna: Apple is a great company and makes great consumer products, and people using the Air Tags to help locate loved ones that have dementia certainly validates that wandering is a very real and serious problem, however the Air Tags, according to Apple, were not designed to track people with cognitive disorders, such as dementia, Alzheimer’s or even autism. These are conditions that require a much more robust solution. For example you want a tracking and monitoring device that will be on and stay on the patient at all times, you want a device that will work anywhere, not just around Apple phones and you’ll want a device that sends you alerts anytime your patient or loved one wanders off beyond a pre set zone. All of which the Air Tags do not provide. Our GPS SmartSoles were designed specifically for wandering, so they have all the safeguards built in. For example the electronics are embedded inside an orthotic insole. So they will always be on the patient anytime they leave the house and they will stay on because no one takes off their shoes while walking around. They have a 4G LTE module just like your cell phones, so they work anywhere in the world there is cellular coverage. And the app can be set up to send you notification if the wearer leaves or enters a designated area, so the care giver doesn’t need to constantly be looking at their phone. That’s just not realistic, as a care giver you want to know when your patient wandered off, but not have to be looking at you phone 24x7. In addition, our next generation SmartSoles with Bluetooth connectivity will allow other medical devices to connect which will add health monitoring features to location tracking, a feature the Air Tags do not have. For all these reasons we believe the GPS SmartSoles are a far better solution to this growing global problem.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Congratulations on the transition from GTX Corp to MetAlert which is now trading under its official new ticker symbol MLRT. We enjoyed your discussion on The Stock Day Podcast where you discussed many aspects of the transition: the rebranding, the MetAlert solution, MetAlert technology, revenue streams, long term growth potential and many other issues. Care to summarize and elaborate on those key points here and what are the key takeaways you would the financial community to understand about MetAlert at this exciting stage of your growth?
Patrick Bertagna: We are very excited to have successfully completed all our corporate actions. It was a big undertaking, but we now have an opportunity to turn those initiatives into success for the Company and its shareholders. The Company needed to rebrand itself because the board of directors no longer felt the name GTX Corp clearly represented who and what the Company is and does, MetAlert screams out what we do – we provide solutions that collect vital data and alerts caregivers so that their loved ones or patients can live a better, safer and longer life. We expect a lot of positive to come out of this and so far the business community and the investment community has embraced our actions.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: As we head into 2023, any new products, new strategic relationships, new developments on the horizon you’d like to talk about?
Patrick Bertagna: Yes, yes and yes. We have a lot going on right now. We are testing our SmartSoles with new distributors in Europe. We have several new partnerships and new products we expect to announce and launch before the yearend. Our engineering department is working on expanding our SmartSole capabilities, so they will become a mobile hub for other wearable devices. Our SmartSoles have a cellular radio and by adding Bluetooth we can then connect to other medical devices that do not have cellular connectivity. What this means is, someone can wear our SmartSoles and have let’s say a heart monitor around their chest and as they are walking around our SmartSoles send their location to the cloud along with their heart rate. This is just one simple example of where MetAlert is heading in the future. And lastly our marketing team is working tirelessly with our rebranding and marketing campaign.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thanks again for joining us today, Patrick. We look forward to frequent updates from you and MetAlert! Any final thoughts you would like to mention today?
It was my pleasure, thank you. We are working on 2 new projects which I hope to be able to share with your audience on our next chat.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thank you for joining us today, Patrick. Congratulations on the exciting transition from GTX Corp to MetAlert. Please elaborate for us about “why the transition” and what is your vision of the long-term growth potential for MetAlert?
Patrick Bertagna: We are excited to be moving forward under the MetAlert brand. GTX no longer represented everything that we do and our vision of the future. In the beginning our focus was primarily on tracking and Global Trek Exploration, abbreviated as GTX made sense. In recent years, our Company has been focusing on solutions that transform people’s lives, with this transformation we felt the need for a change. Our vision is that in the near future, the people that use our products and services will live longer, healthier, and higher quality lives. This will happen because our products will collect vital information in real time, send it to the cloud, where that data can be analyzed and through our backend A.I. and notification platform, that data will be sent to doctors, first responders, caregivers, or family members. Imagine a 65-year-old man, that has a mild heart attack, doesn’t really think much of it and the next day goes out and plays tennis or golf and has another heart attack. Our products would be able to detect that, send the information to a first responder including the address of where that person is. This scenario is a life saver for that individual and we believe MetAlert speaks to that vision.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Your company has clearly demonstrated growing traction in your target markets with customers in all 50 States and international distributors servicing customers in over 35 countries. That’s quite impressive, and so is your customer list, which includes the U.S. Military, Foreign Military, public health authorities and municipalities, emergency, and law enforcement, first responders, private schools, assisted living facilities, NGOs, small business enterprises, senior care homes, and direct to consumer. Please give us an overview of MetAlert’s product line.
Patrick Bertagna: Our products are centered around health, safety, wellness, longevity, and quality of life. At the core of our products is our award-winning GPS SmartSole. In addition to providing data about the location and information about the surrounding environment, our SmartSole will collect data from other wearable medical devices for real time evaluation. Many of our end users have special needs due to certain medical conditions, which makes the collection and evaluation of additional health information vital. Our mission is to provide them different wearable devices that will seamlessly meld with their lifestyle which will be collecting pertinent medical information, such as heart rate, oxygen intake, blood pressure, etc. all in real time and including their location.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Kudos on the excellent collateral material that’s available regarding your flagship product GPS SmartSole, “the world’s first invisible wearable technology tracking device created for those at risk of wandering due to Alzheimer’s, dementia, autism and traumatic brain injury”. We get it, it’s Dr. Scholl’s meets LoJack! Please elaborate for us about the lifesaving features that GPS SmartSole provides and the peace-of-mind it provides to caregivers.
Patrick Bertagna: The GPS SmartSoles have been our flagship product for over 5 years and with the recent launch of our new 4G Cat M1 LTE which include WI-FI, Bluetooth, and NFC technology in addition to cellular and GPS, these orthotic insoles will be the central hub or mobile wearable hot spot which will collect data and anywhere in the world there is cell coverage will send that data to the cloud. Think of an elderly person who has dementia or a child with autism who gets lost or disoriented and within minutes a caregiver knows exactly where they are right from their phone. Now add knowing that person’s general medical condition, such as heart rate or blood pressure. Knowledge is health, so knowing these things in real time can be lifesaving to the individual which in turn brings peace of mind to their loved ones or caregivers.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Any particular testimonials or awards you would like to mention, Patrick?
Patrick Bertagna: We have been blessed over the years with many awards, some of our most notable have been:
- AARP listed us in their Top Ten New Technology
- We were featured in the 100 most important inventions of mankind in the Swedish Museum of Technology
- We came in second place at the CTIA awards, first place was Microsoft, and third place was Samsung- so pretty good company to be in
- We won the People’s Choice award for most innovative connected device
I believe we have recently been nominated for several new awards, so we shall see if there are a few more accolades on the way.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: I would like encourage all of our readers to watch your excellent video presentation here about the Future for Senior Healthcare, the “longevity revolutions” and how MetAlert “mobile hotspot” technology enables an, actionable, life-saving solution for millions of people that, for one reason or another, cannot use a cellphone. Please elaborate for us Patrick regarding your perspective on these issues.
Patrick Bertagna: Covid showed us how important it is to be healthy and know in real time about our health status, especially for seniors or people with underlying medical conditions. It was just a few months ago, most of us could not walk into a public place without our temperatures being taken. Think about that, the establishment didn’t want to know what your temperature was 5 days ago when you were last at the doctor’s office, they wanted to know right now at this moment how you were feeling. So COVID gave all of us a dose of the new normal, which is the collective “We” need to know how people are feeling in real time and knowing how they feel could determine their life-or-death outcome. “We” as a society had never really experienced this before. This is what lead to the MetAlert epiphany that Knowledge is Health and by providing real time biometric data, all the time, with easy secure access could possibly save lives, extend lives, and help improve the quality of life. This technology was not available to us 10 or even 5 years ago, but it is now. And society at large didn’t see the importance of having this information readily available, until now! So COVID was actually the perfect storm that enabled MetAlert to look over the horizon and carve out its path to play a key role in the Longevity Revolution, whereby in the near future the average life could easily be 100 plus years.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Let’s turn to the financial community for a moment. Your video presentation also provided an excellent overview of MetAlert’s global market potential as illustrated in this chart. We also understand that the pandemic had a favorable, positive-cash flow, effect on you’re the Company. Please walk us through these key takeaways, and any other major points, that you would like the financial community to understand regarding MetAlert’s future growth potential.
Patrick Bertagna: I think we cover many of these points in the video, but the big take away is the slide above which shows 2.91% of the world’s population is our target customer. That represents around 34 million people. We realize this space is going to get crowded and competition will grow, but we have been servicing this population for years and many of our products are protected with multiple patents. For people with Alzheimer’s, dementia, autism and traumatic brain injury what many of them have in common is it can be very challenging to get them the proper medical care they need, because they may not be able to communicate properly or it’s hard to get them to go to the doctor’s office for a check-up, so by being able to remotely monitor their conditions, pass that information to health care professionals so they can take action which will help improve that person’s life, is a big thing, especially for their loved ones and caregivers. Our business model is a recurring monthly monitoring fee, and those fees range from $5.00 to $100.00 per month, per user depending on the services they subscribe to. Even 1% of our total potential target at an average of $50 per month- do the math…..
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: It’s clearly a huge global market, estimated at $3.7 trillion, which is growing fast, and it’s also market that is attracting some big-name players such as Apple & Samsung. Please tell us about MetAlert’s strategy in this field and your patent protection.
Patrick Bertagna: Our strategy is to stay in our lane. We have been servicing a niche sector, which represents around 3% of the population, we have dozens of patents surrounding our technology and we believe in continuing to service this sector and grow both horizontally, meaning to add more users every month and vertically, meaning to offer more services to our users. Think of this like the early cell phone model, first it was to get users, then it was to add more features they would consume and look where we are today hundreds of millions of people spending hundreds of dollars each month.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: We read with great interest about your strategic partnership with GBT Technologies. Please tell us more.
Patrick Bertagna: GBT is one of our first partners in what’s next for MetAlert. We are currently working on integrating one of their wearable devices into our SmartSole platform and running some of the data we collect through their backend A.I. platform.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Any other strategic relationships or partnerships you’d like to mention?
Patrick Bertagna: We have several new partnerships which we have just finalized or about to finalize, all of them will be announced in the coming weeks. But we are very excited because we will be introducing new products, services and technologies which will support our vision to be a major contributor in the Longevity Revolution.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thank you again for joining us today Patrick – any other subjects you would to cover?
Patrick Bertagna: I believe the next 5 years are going to be transformational in terms of technology and medical advancements. By 2027 it is estimated that there will be over 5 billion IoT devices deployed, and some of those devices will certainly be ours. So, think of all that data that is going to be available, combine that with A.I. and massive server storage and processing capabilities and the results will be awesome. To that end, I think it’s safe to say for many of us 100 will be the new 75 and overall quality of life will improve dramatically in the coming years. Knowledge is Health and MetAlert is all in to pave the way towards the Longevity Revolution.
For more information: www.MetAlert.com