Merchavia Announces a $500,000 Investment in Digital Therapeutics Company 'Wellness Layers'

BNEI BRAK, Israel, January 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Merchavia Holdings and Investments (TASE: MRHL), an Israeli investment company specializing in early-stage life sciences companies, announced a signing of a non-binding memorandum of understandings in which it will invest $500,000 in Digital Therapeutics Company 'Wellness Layers', as part of an investment round of up to $1 million. After due diligence is completed, a binding agreement will be signed.

Eli Arad, Merchavia CEO: "Our portfolio consists of breakthrough biotechnology companies operating in major markets. The investments we have made already created significant value for us in clinical successes, reaching breakthrough commercialization agreements, and raising successful follow-up financing rounds. We are excited to bring 'Wellness Layers', which provides digital health solutions, into our promising portfolio. The company is mature, generating millions of dollars in revenue, and its customers includes global medical giants and leading medical institutions worldwide. Today, due to various market dynamics, healthcare stakeholders are forced to transition their various traditional patient relationship management and population health services to digital. 'Wellness Layers' offers a cloud solution that makes this digital transition easy and quick. The company is positioned at the epicenter of this momentous healthcare market change and we are convinced that the Wellness Layers team has an excellent professional and marketing infrastructure to become a market leader, while making an important contribution to creating value for Merchavia's shareholders."

Dr. Amir Kishon, Founder and CEO, Wellness Layers: "We are happy about the vote of confidence and the investment by Merchavia, which will speed up the company's growth. Wellness Layers operates in the Digital Therapeutics market in which the world of old healthcare is undergoing a digital transformation against a backdrop of enormous competition and with a requirement to provide digital healthcare that enables continual remote management, monitoring and guidance of patients by health systems and organizations - this with the aim of providing the best medical services as well as major savings in costs. We have recently seen increasing investments in Digital Therapeutics by leading companies in the medical device sector, large pharmaceutical companies, medical insurance companies and healthcare services providers, so that through the financing round, and our extremely easy cloud platform, it is our intention to deepen Wellness Layers' product activities, to lead marketing efforts, and to increase the company's revenue to a target of tens of millions of dollars in the next three years, while creating major value for our customers, their patients, and for society."

An outstanding example of the company's success is the clinical results presented in the digital therapeutics project for patients at risk of diabetes, which was conducted using the company's systems by Medtronic, in collaboration with IBM. For 83% of the program's participants, there was a major decrease of two points in HbA1c, which means the dramatic improvement of the health indices of those patients. The company's systems currently support tens of thousands of patients in areas such as diabetes, heart disease, AIDS, remote medication management, health rehabilitation, employee wellness, and weight loss.

Contact:
Eli Arad
[email protected]
+972-3-5788770

SOURCE Merchavia Holding and Investment LTD