Shares of VitalCom Are Showing Signs of Life
Shares of VitalCom Inc. almost doubled Friday, spurred by the Tustin company’s introduction of two software systems that let medical workers monitor patients’ vital signs over the Internet or from off-site observation centers.
The stock closed at $4.88 a share, up $2.38. More than 1 million shares were traded, 50 times the stock’s average daily volume for the past three months.
Investors’ enthusiasm for the company’s newest wares apparently outweighed its poor fourth-quarter results. On Friday, VitalCom reported a $1.7 million net loss, or 21 cents a share; it earned $56,259, or 1 cent a share, for the previous year’s final three months.
The two new products unveiled this week are called SiteLink and PatientBrowser. SiteLink is a wireless system that supplies technicians at one location with real-time information about patients at another site. PatientBrowser is software that enables doctors at home or in their offices to use the Web to check on patients.
Using such electronic eyes and ears frees nurses to provide more one-on-one care and gives doctors information more directly, company executives said.
The systems cost $500,000 to more than $1 million apiece but could save money by allowing hospitals to take patients out of costly, heavily staffed units sooner or treat them in smaller, more rural facilities that do not have on-site specialists.
“Sometimes physicians keep patients in the intensive-care unit longer than necessary because they get more monitoring there,” VitalCom spokeswoman Cheryl Isen said. “This gives them another option.”
SiteLink premiered this year at Sacramento’s Sutter Memorial Hospital, where as many as 40 patients who have undergone orthopedic and urological procedures are having their hearts monitored by technicians in a control room at Sutter General Hospital three miles away.
Even if the technicians blink, the system recognizes emergencies, paging nurses and doctors when necessary, VitalCom executives said.
“The patients are never left unattended,” said Debi Cale, nursing director for telemetry and cardiac rehabilitation at Sutter Memorial Hospital. “It allows us to have a cardiac expert keeping a day-to-day eye on them without moving them somewhere that has an expert sitting there.”
VitalCom’s systems differ from others by collecting information from monitors made by all manufacturers. Other companies make similar communication systems, which work only with specific monitors. That gives hospital added flexibility, Isen said.
SiteLink and PatientBrowser sales may not show up on VitalCom’s flagging income statements for about a year, Isen said.
In the fourth quarter, the company reported revenue of $4.1 million, down from $5.6 million for the previous year’s final quarter.
For the year, the company lost $4.8 million, or 60 cents a share, compared with the previous year’s loss of $1.5 million, or 18 cents a share. Annual revenue dropped 22% to $16.3 million.
Friday’s upward swing in VitalCom’s stock price reverses more than two years of decline and inattention for the company’s stock.
Business was particularly slow last year as hospitals curtailed software purchases because of Y2K concerns and decreased government reimbursement.
