Montreal’s Medfar Clinical Solutions, an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) provider, is raising nearly $25 million in venture capital. The round was led by Walter Capital Partners.

Medfar said it will put the money towards expansion, innovation and acquiring other companies in North America.

“Our goal is to change health care,” CEO Elias Farah told the Montreal Gazette in 2020. “We want to become a Quebec business icon, like a Jean Coutu,” referencing the Quebec pharmacy behemoth owned by grocer Metro Inc.

Per the Gazette, Medfar’s software lets doctors consult electronic medical records, analyze data and automate routine tasks such as appointments, billings and prescription renewals to save time. It’s already in use at more than 750 Quebec clinics, which the company says translates into a provincial market share of about 35 per cent, and counts clients as far afield as Mexico and Colombia.

CEO Elias Farah said the company has already acquired two other companies within that last 18 months, and will look to acquire other EMR provider companies.

Founded in 2010 by two aeronautical engineers, the company says it was the first to certify a fully web-based EMR solution in Canada. Farah studied at Montreal’s École Polytechnique while cofounder Patrick Issid came from McGill. Both cofounders came to the field from aerospace: Farah from Bombardier and Issid from landing gear-maker Héroux-Devtek of Longueuil.

An EMR is an electronic record of health-related information on an individual that can be created, gathered, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff within one health care organization. These systems can facilitate workflow and improve the quality of patient care and patient safety.

Fast-growing company

Back in January, 2020, the Montreal Gazette reported that Medfar was targeting revenue of $8 million to $10 million for 2021, a jump of at least 60 per cent from 2020’s $5-million estimate.

Medfar’s technology serves nearly 7,000 physicians in Canada delivering 10 million consultations annually. Nearly 400 clinics in Canada deployed Medfar solutions in 2020.

By 2030, Medfar’s founders want to deliver on what they call their “5-5” strategy, noted the Gazette. That’s a company with a valuation of $5 billion that’s present on five continents, employs 5,000 people, serves at least 5 million care providers and 500 million patients.

“To achieve 5-5, we need 60-per-cent annual growth every year. So far we’re ahead of this,” Farah told the newspaper at the time.

Éric Phaneuf, the CEO of Walter Capital Partners, said his firm partners with strong management teams possessing deep sector understanding. He thinks Medfar has all the ingredients to become a leading player globally.

“We are especially impressed by MEDFAR’s resilience and agility in adapting to the pandemic and rising to the challenge of better serving their users with fast-paced virtual health advances in unprecedented circumstances,” said Phaneuf, who will join Medfar’s board of directors.

Industry growth

“Health-care administration is getting more and more complex,” Issid told the Gazette. “People are living longer and developing multiple conditions. Lack of information is one of the top causes of preventable deaths.”

Farah puts Medfar’s potential market in North America at around $4 billion a year.

Countries in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia are all emerging markets for Medfar.

In fact, more than 6,000 private clinics open every year in China, a key region for the company. Medfar already acquire a Chinese billing company, and was in the process of acquiring a stake in its local distributor at the time of the Gazette article.

“We should start booking our first revenue from China in 2020,” Farah told the paper. “We’re in discussions with more than 150 chains of clinics in China, so we clearly have a need for billing services.”