The Osprey Medical Inc (ASX: OSP) share price is on the move today as the company announced a deal with Regional Health Care Group to distribute Osprey products. At the time of writing, the Osprey share price is trading 4.17% higher at 2.5 cents.
What Osprey does
Osprey Medical aims to make heart imaging procedures safer for patients with poor kidney function. The company's core technologies originated from research conducted by Dr David Kaye at Melbourne's Baker Institute.
Its proprietary dye reduction and monitoring technologies are designed to help physicians minimise dye usage and monitor the dose levels of dye in real time throughout the procedure, potentially saving lives and money in the process.
Distribution agreement
This morning, the Osprey share price has shot up as the company announced a new distribution agreement. Osprey announced an agreement with Australian owned medical distribution company, Regional Health Care Group (RHCG). The deal will see RHCG exclusively distribute Osprey's products across Australia and New Zealand.
The three year deal will result in Osprey's technology being made available to healthcare professionals across both Australia and New Zealand for the first time. Furthermore, the contract has annual minimum sales volumes and a fixed transfer price over the term of the agreement providing sales security for Osprey.
This agreement complements the company's strategic alliance with GE Healthcare which provides exclusive distribution of Osprey's product portfolio.
Osprey's President and CEO, Mike McCormick, said of the deal:
We are excited to enter this agreement with RHCG which will see the Australian developed technology coming to the Australian and New Zealand markets. Our technology originates from Australia and it has been a long-held desire to offer it to Australian healthcare professionals. This agreement is the first step in addressing the rising issue of CI-AKI as a result of heart imaging procedures in patients with CKD.
An alarming 25% of patients having heart procedures are at risk of having a CI-AKI event, which is sudden damage to the kidneys caused by the x-ray imaging dye. CI-AKI frequently leads to negative patient outcomes, longer hospital stays and, in some cases, kidney failure and death.
What now for the Osprey share price?
The Osprey share price has been on a steady decline since the initial announcement of the deal with GE Healthcare at the end of July. Shareholders will be hoping that as the company starts to reap the rewards of the partnership, it will have a change in fortunes.
The Osprey share price is currently up 4.17%, however it remains more than 60% lower than its 52-week high of 6.3 cents. The Osprey share price is down 16.67% since the start of the year.
