TALi Digital (ASX:TD1) signs exclusive US market agreement with Akili, August 2021

TALi Digital Limited (ASX:TD1) Managing Director Glenn Smith introduces the company’s software for the assessment and treatment of childhood attention difficulties and discusses the company's recent agreement with US company Akili.

Melissa Darmawan: Hello. Melissa Darmawan for the Finance News Network. Joining me from TALi Digital (ASX:TD1) is Managing Director Glenn Smith. Glenn, welcome to FNN.

Glenn Smith: Hello Melissa. Thank you.

Melissa Darmawan: Congratulations, Glenn, on the announcement yesterday of the strategic licensing agreement with Akili. Before we get into the details of the deal, can you give our audience some background on TALi Digital?

Glenn Smith: So, TALi Digital is a listed healthcare company in Australia, and we're squarely focused on being a digital health innovator. So, what we do is we build digital tests and digital therapeutics that treat cognitive impairments and cognitive performance. So, we're squarely looking at improving brain health through technology. So, to do that, we've built a platform technology, and that platform technology allows us, through science, to build applications over the top, which are gamified. And that gamification allows children, in particular, which is our first product category, to engage with these new digital tests and digital therapeutics, so they get a science and clinically based outcome. This is really primarily important for children with attention issues or have symptoms of ADHD, so attention hyperactivity disorder or autism spectrum disorder. And it's really this core platform, which is backed by patents that have been issued in multiple countries around the world, that's allowing us to build all this global enterprise, which is going to insert the TALi technology into multiple products in this digital health space.

Melissa Darmawan: Glenn, can you tell us a bit more about your current products?

Glenn Smith: TALi Detect and TALi Train, these are really exciting innovations. So TALi Detect is a 20-minute test that's a gamified application that allows children in that three- to eight-year range to be tested for attention deficits. That's really critical because the brain is at its most plastic when you're young. So, if you can identify those deficiencies early, then you can intervene in non-invasive ways and provide the best head brain health outcome for that child. But what we do is we complement that with TALi Train. TALi Train is an intensive five-week program which actually treats the underlying symptoms and condition of inattention. That's really critical for children who may have ADHD, autism spectrum disorder and other behavioral issues. These are really accessible products because you download the applications from the iOS store or the Google Play store, so they can be delivered by telehealth, telemedicine or in the home.

Melissa Darmawan: Thanks, Glenn, for the overview. And now can you tell us more about the transformational deal with Akili and how important this is for TALi Digital?

Glenn Smith: Yes, absolutely. We're really excited about this relationship with Akili Interactive, a private US company that is really in the same digital therapeutic space that we are. They have the same ethos of being science and clinically based, and they're delivering out new technology or new digital therapeutics for teenagers. TALi is squarely focused initially on the early childhood space, so between the ages of three to eight, so we're really complementary there, so that's why we've undertaken to execute a strategic license agreement. So, Akili will use the TALi platform and our patent base so that we can build new products for them, for the US market, to service that early childhood space. Now they have a core ability to deliver out our products through their marketing and sales network. So, it's really important for us, because we don't have to set up that infrastructure in the US and they can deliver out directly to physicians and patients in the US. So, we're going to deliver digital tests and digital therapeutics, primarily for children with ADHD. This is really exciting because the deal is worth an expected, milestone payments of $51 million to us, and then there are royalties over the top of that that get paid every time a child engages with our platform. So, not only are we delivering new science, new technology to treat conditions that are primarily now treated by invasive ways or drugs, with new digital technologies, we're building a global, scalable revenue model here. So, we're very excited about this relationship.

Melissa Darmawan: And what are the next steps in your growth strategy over the next one to two years?

Glenn Smith: Yeah, we're excited now, but we're building this business for a multi-decade growth strategy. And this deal with Akili is transformational. It really sets that foundation where we can deliver out our technology and products into the US market, the world's largest market for ADHD interventions. But what it does is it sets a model, a very scalable model for us, where we can deliver out new partnerships and licensee agreements in other high-value jurisdictions, like Japan, Korea, the UK, Canada, and we also have an existing partnership with a large media conglomerate in India, the Times Group, where we're delivering out our products through their channels, direct to customers. So, this allows us to have a diverse strategy where we can provide access to our tools in countries which may not have the healthcare infrastructure to deliver out our digital technologies, but in the interim, we can still help those children and deliver benefit that is science-based and evidence-based. That's really exciting. So, we're building a global business that's going to be annuity income, revenues over multiple decades and is going to be a stalwart in the ecosystem that is digital diagnostics and digital testing.

Melissa Darmawan: Glenn Smith, thanks for the overview. I look forward to hearing from you with further updates.

Glenn Smith: Thanks, Melissa.

Source: Finance News Network