Henry Schein (NASDAQ:HSIC)’s HSIC dental division has been grabbing the headlines of late given a string of positive developments. Following its last week’s exclusive distribution agreement with Zyris Inc., this time the company has come up with its new offerings in teledentistry.
Per the company’s announcement, it has started to distribute teledentistry solutions, digital case presentation tools and intraoral imaging devices maker MouthWatch’s platform, TeleDent. This is a teledentistry and patient engagement platform that offers remote patient monitoring through live video conferencing, patient messaging, and cloud collaboration under mobile settings.
Just like the company’s last-week’s development, this too remains part of Henry Schein’s efforts to make dental practice safer amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Teledent at a Glance
TeleDent offers real-time, two-way video conferencing. This helps the dental practitioners in conducting emergency triages, consultations, pre-visit screenings, post-op visits and visual case presentations virtually. Using TeleDent, the consultations can be recorded for integration into clinical care and patient records to help ensure effective and thorough virtual dental care.
Patient messaging helps dentists to seamlessly collaborate and share diagnostic information with their dental team and specialists on a cloud-based portal. The dental team can also easily transition patients to a specialist and see their task assignments within the TeleDent platform.
Teledent is currently available to customers through Henry Schein Dental and Henry Schein One.
Is the Deal a Strategic Fit for Henry Schien?
Amid the pandemic-driven healthcare scenario, demand for remote patient monitoring is on the rise in the dental field to minimize threat of infection. In such a situation, we expect the Teledent platform to show strong customer acceptance and broaden Henry Schien’s customer base.
Developments Within Dental Business
In September, Henry Schien entered into an exclusive agreement with Zyris Inc. to distribute its full-line of easy-to-use dental isolation products. Specifically, Henry Schien will be the exclusive distributor of Zyris products like Isolite 3, Isovac 2, Isodry and the company’s patented single-use Mouthpieces.
In August, Henry Schein One, a joint venture of Henry Schein and Internet Brands, announced an exclusive sales and marketing relationship with eAssist Dental Solutions (eAssist), a developer of a fast-growing virtual dental billing outsourcing service.
In this regard, despite pandemic-led business disruptions in the second quarter of 2020, the Henry Schein One dental software business has been progressing well. A few of Henry Schein One software solutions enabling patient engagement related to appointment bookings as well as developing and operating virtual waiting rooms have received favorable customer responses. Software sales witnessed gradual improvement as the second quarter progressed, in line with the resumption of dental practice operations.
Henry Schein also announced the acquisition of Dentally, which is a cloud-based U.K. dental software provider. Through this buyout, Henry Schein aims to expand its international presence and enhance its practice management software solution portfolio.
Share Price Performance
Over the past six months, Henry Schein has underperformed the industry. The stock has gained 12.3% compared with the industry's 15.5% growth.
Zacks Rank & Key Picks
Currently, Henry Schein carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Some better-ranked stocks from the broader medical space are QIAGEN N.V. QGEN, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc (NYSE:TMO). TMO and Hologic (NASDAQ:HOLX), Inc. HOLX.
QIAGEN’s long-term earnings growth rate is estimated at 22.3%. It currently sports a Zacks Rank #1. (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
Thermo Fisher’s long-term earnings growth rate is estimated at 15%. It currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
Hologic’s long-term earnings growth rate is estimated at 15.5%. The company presently sports a Zacks Rank #1.
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