GLOBAL medical services provider Medaire has widened its reach with two key deals.
It has expanded its agreement with Qantas to provide medical assistance services to the airline’s travelling employees worldwide.
That agreement makes Qantas the fifth commerical carrier of Medaire’s 68 airline clients to contract for its crew assistance services which include 24-hour access to physicians, patient monitoring, access to a network of international medical clinics and emergency medical evaluations.
The company has also signed a letter of intent with the Beijing International Heart Hospital to develop an integ-rated outpatient medical clinic and response centre in the Chinese capital.
The clinical will open later this year and will be operated by Medaire’s subsidiary Global Doctor.
The clinic will provide specialty out-patient, primary and urgent care ser-vices to business travellers, expat-riates and Chinese consumers in Beijing.
Medaire is a US-based company but has strong links to Western Australia through its listing.
The company was backdoor-listed onto the Australian Stock Exchange through WA-based Global Doctor, a company headed by Gavin Argyle.
That company had medical clinics dotted throughout South East Asia.
Mr Argyle is now a Medaire executive director.
He said the companies core business revolved around supplying medical assistance to plane passengers.
Much of that assistance comes from Medaire’s Medlink call centre which has access to doctors specialising in emergency medicine.
Medaire supplies the inflight medical kits carried by the 68 airlines that use its service.
In the case of an inflight emergency, the plane’s crew contacts Medlink and an emergency medicine specialist helps them deal with the emergency.
Medaire can also advise the pilot on the nearest airport with suitable medical assistance if needed and arranges to have an ambulance waiting for the plane.
Mr Argyle said because Medaire supplied the medical kits to the aircraft, the emergency medicine specialist was aware of what means of treatment he had at his disposal.
"Medaire does about 50 emerg-encies a day through Medlink," he said.
"Most of these are onboard airlines."
Medaire began its life in 1986 and specialises in supplying in-flight medical assistance to commercial airlines.
It has since broadened its service to cover yachts, private business travellers and even the US military.
The company has picked up a contract to supply medical assistance to US Navy supply vessels. These ships are not large enough to have their own doctors on board.
Mr Argyle said Medaire had 700 US multinationals as its clients – mainly supplying services to their corporate jets.
"But if it’s their top executives, they have our card and can call us for assistance from anywhere in the world," he said.
The company is forecasting a strong growth for 2004, based largely on the fact that it continued to grow despite the war on terror and the SARS outbreak – two areas that hit hard on its primary airline market.
"We had a big third quarter last year, due to defibrillator sales," he said.
"Our kit business is an annuity style business. Every kit comes back to us three times a year for restocking.
"We make more money from refurbishing those kits than we do from selling them."
Mr Argyle said the company had only needed to do one capital raising in the past five years – in September.
He said one of the things driving the company’s growth, particularly in its main airline market, was the fact that more and more doctors were not responding to calls on airlines.
