Good morning and good evening, everyone. We're just getting folks coming into the call now, so we're gonna give them a minute or so before we get underway. So just bear with us for a little bit while folks navigate the Zoom entry, and we should be getting underway in just a moment. For those folks just joining, we're just waiting on a couple of attendees here. We'll just give them a chance to get through the Zoom entry, and we'll get underway in about 30 seconds here. Okay, well, we've hit about 300 attendees at the moment, so we're gonna get underway here. Let me open by welcoming everyone to this Sofdra commercial day for September of 2024.
It's morning time in Australia. It's evening at various places in the U.S. here. Happy to have everyone. Thank you for your attendance. I'm just gonna quickly run through the folks that you see on the screen here, just to introduce them before I hand over to our chairman, Vince Ippolito. We have Bill Bush joining us from SendRx, our pharmacy partner. George Jones joining us from UpScript, Jay Manara joining us from Klick Health, and Lisa Pieretti joining us from the International Hyperhidrosis Society. From the company, Vince Ippolito, a familiar face, our Executive Chairman, Howie McKibbon, our CEO.
We have John Schohl , who is the head of our managed markets, and also Chris Lesovitz, who runs our finance team, so I'm gonna hand over to Vince now. Please note that we do have a Q and A function for the webinar this morning. Please feel free to put any questions in there. We'll do our best to get to those questions. We think that the presentation should take about an hour. We'll leave some time at the end of that for some questions, and we look forward to your feedback as we move through the presentation. We'll obviously just note the disclaimer that we generally have at the start of these presentations. You know, these are forward-looking statements and forecasts, so please note that. And with that, Vince, hand over to you for the introduction.
Great. Thank you, Matt. I'm very pleased for all of you that are joining us here today for this Botanix Investor Webinar here to go through our commercial readiness. As Matt mentioned, I think we had initially about 300 log on at the start here. If you've just joined us for the introduction, we've had almost 500 registered for this webinar. So we're quite pleased and very excited about your interest in learning more about Botanix and our commercial readiness. So those of you that are new to the company, we are a dermatology-focused company, and in that area, it's common skin diseases. What do I mean by that? Those are things like acne, atopic dermatitis, rosacea, but in this instance, we're gonna talk about excessive sweating, which is hyperhidrosis.
Botanix has assembled a world-class team that has launched almost 30 products here in the United States. And when I mean launched, they have developed these assets and put them right into the marketplace. And as many people are joining us here now today at Botanix as new employees, we've worked with a lot of these individuals in the past, and they have contributed greatly to the success of those 30 products that we put into the marketplace. So we're excited to have new employees joining us here every day. Today, we're gonna talk to you about our commercial readiness for Sofdra, our recently approved FDA product for the treatment of primary axillary hyperhidrosis, so that's excessive sweating under the underarms, and our indication is gonna be for adults and children nine years of age and up. The company is well capitalized here for the launch.
We just completed our financial year-end and reported AUD 79 million of cash on hand, that'll be used for our commercial launch and the development of our platform, which we're gonna go into extensive detail here for you today, and then lastly, the platform itself. This is an area that we're gonna take a really deep dive in this webinar on. The platform combines patient targeting, telemedicine, reimbursement management, direct fulfillment capabilities. It's all put together in one AI-powered platform here, so you'll learn a lot about that today. Next slide, Matt. As an overview to the company, the current share price is trading at approximately AUD 0.42. We've had tremendous growth in the stock as we've gotten ready here for revenue generation and our commercial launch.
The stock has gone from last 6 months, from AUD 0.19 up to currently, AUD 0.42. 1.8 billion shares outstanding, a market cap of AUD 762 million. The company has no debt. Top 20 shareholders hold approximately 34% of our holdings, with the board and management of around 6%. We have two offices in the United States, our development office in Philadelphia, and then we've recently just opened our commercial office in Phoenix, Arizona. Next slide. So what are we gonna talk about here today? Well, it's really falling into these five buckets. We're gonna go into great detail. Number one, we're gonna share some results of our recent survey of hyperhidrosis patients, and what these key learnings have informed us for our readiness for launch and our digital platform.
Next, we're gonna go into details about our commercial plan and our patient experience program, which is about to kick off here in the fourth quarter. We'll go into the specific tactics themselves, and when you can expect to see them in the marketplace. Next, we're gonna talk about our digital platform. We've spoken a lot about the digital platform, and how unique this platform is in terms of patient acquisitions, where we're gonna tell you, how do we find these patients, and how do we get them into our reimbursement circle? Which leads us right into the next area of the telemedicine platform and our concierge service, as we're calling it here today, that helps patients navigate from telemedicine right into our single source pharmacy.
If there are reimbursement challenges that have to be overcome, well, the concierge service will serve as an intermediary between the two systems. And then lastly, we're gonna take a deep dive into our reimbursement and contracting with the payers, and tell you where we're at today and what to expect from that. Matt had introduced our presenters here today, but you'll hear specifically from Howie McKibbon, our Chief Executive Officer, John Schohl , our VP of Managed Markets. Matt is gonna serve as our facilitator here, and take us through the Q and A. Our valued presenters, and thank you so much for your preparation in joining us here today, George Jones, Chief Operating Officer at UpScript Health, Lisa Pieretti, Executive Director and founding member of the International Hyperhidrosis Society, and Jay Manara, Senior Vice President of strategy and planning at Klick Health. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Matt to introduce our first speaker. Thank you.
Thanks, Vince. So just handing over now to Lisa Pieretti. She's gonna take us through the results of a recent survey that was conducted with one of the Australian analysts. And Lisa, over to you.
Thank you, Matt. I'm so glad to be here. So in e arlier this year, I was contacted by a brilliant analyst from E&P, and was asking me my insights and my thoughts about the hyperhidrosis community, and how they would receive a new treatment such as the Sofdra that we're talking about today. So he and I were talking so much, and we had such curiosity, we decided that it would be wonderful and really powerful to go ahead and take the questions to the people themselves. We fielded a survey in May, and our goal was 100 people to respond, 100 completed responses, but we closed it when we got to 136, because the responses were so rich, and it was just a wonderful learning experience, and I'm just forever thankful for the opportunity to do this. The survey was only sent to those who were U.S. residents. They were over 18 years old, and they had confirmed that they had axillary hyperhidrosis or excessive sweating of the underarms. So that was the first question, the gating question.
Question number two was, if a new prescription topical gel is clinically proven to be more effective in reducing underarm sweating than available over-the-counter products, what is the likelihood that you would try it? And here, I just really wanted to know just raw information of how they would feel about a new topical product that was prescription. So, we were surprised that 95% said that they are likely or very likely to try it. So even just knowing that it's a prescription, that it's a topical, and that it's a gel, and is clinically proven to be more effective than OTC products, they were 95% ready to try it, which was, i t was shocking. I was surprised, and I was really glad that we asked the question. Next slide.
So we then asked, in the question number 3, we then asked if this same prescription product, so we were keeping them in that space of the first question, clinically proven to be more effective than the available OTCs, and specifically for underarm sweating, it has a small potential for side effects like dry mouth. Would that impact your likelihood to try it? And this is something that I have never seen this question posed, and if it was, it's never been published, so I was really curious on what the threshold was for their, you know, appetite for side effects such as dry mouth. And 75% said that the side effects would impact their decision to try it a little or none at all. So it's fascinating to see that the side effects don't, i t, it, they're resilient.
The patient population is resilient in accepting a certain amount of side effects, but it's always within reason. Some of the open comments were to the effect of, "Well, it all depends on how severe it is," and things that you would expect from the patient population. Next slide. So the question number 6 , we asked them the top reasons for their choices for what they would choose, one product versus another. So we said, "Given the choice between two treatments that had similar impact on reducing your underarm sweating, what are your top reasons you would try one product over another?" So this is opening it wide up to all the different kinds of treatments, all the different modalities, and I wanted to find out where they were.
And again, as far as I know, I have never seen this information asked, and answered, and published. So the first criteria is their cost, so. And that is something you would expect. Remember, the hyperhidrosis community has a wide range of treatments to consider, and some are thousands of dollars, some are not, or are very inexpensive. So they had no idea what the cost would be for this treatment. So it makes sense that they would say cost is a factor, 'cause they had no idea what the cost was for the product that we were discussing here.
The second most important thing is the side effects, and again, that is because they don't know what the side effects are, and they don't know how for any treatment before they try it, and they don't know how severe they are, how important they are to their overall health. So that was their number 2 . Now, what I loved was how important not going to the doctor's office was. This is a question I've wanted to ask for many years. So, not having to go to the doctor's office, easy to use, and recommendation from people, and then at the bottom, you see there, easily available. Those were the top criterion that people choose when they think of when they're choosing between treatments, and this was really telling.
You see that the in-office, doctor-administered was not important to them at all, to go into a doctor's office to get their treatment, and conversely, not having to go to the doctor's is very important to them. So, it seems as though the elements and the characteristics of the Sofdra product and the patient experience with them ticks off every one of the most important aspects of their choices. Next slide. Thank you. Now, we wanted to find out, and this is a very curious question, how much does a treatment have to reduce your sweating for you to try it? So this is all around what would the clinical research say, what would marketing say, what would your doctor have to say?
How much does it have to reduce your sweating for you to at least strongly consider giving it a try? It came out at 55%, which, again, I was surprised at this. Even though I've been at this for a couple of decades, I was surprised that it was as low as 55%. You can see here that the community, the hyperhidrosis community, the millions of people are really looking for a solution, and they're willing to deal with side effects, and they're willing to say, it's okay if it only cuts my sweating in half. You'll see other disease states where the problem, but here they're saying you just have to cut it in half, which is a wonderful thing, I think.
And then right after that, we build on that, and then we say, once you've tried it, how much does a product need to reduce your underarm sweating for you to continue to use it? And, I have just always been curious if staying on a product is, if it's the same as trying it. So it looks here that it has to be a bit more efficacious for them to continue to use it. So this gets to the idea that it's really important to have patients use it and use a product in the most efficacious way it possibly can. So it's a very important takeaway for the brand team and for the researchers in this. Thank you. Next slide. To the commercial plan. Thank you so much.
Thank you very much, Lisa. We greatly appreciate it. It's a wealth of information that you provided for us. It's a transformational year for Botanix, as we focus on the commercialization of Sofdra. I'm gonna speak to the overall plan, as well as the patient experience program. Then I'm gonna turn it over to a few key partners to discuss how we'll efficiently engage patients, drive them to telemedicine for a diagnosis and treatment, and then our VP of reimbursement or managed markets, John Schohl , will provide an update regarding Sofdra coverage. Our commercialization timeline over the next year follows a three-phased approach. The first phase is focused on engaging commercial patients to both optimize the platform, as Vince stated earlier, and extend the opportunity to appropriate patient.
I'm sorry. Appropriate patients can receive Sofdra early while we bring sales force leadership on board, and you can see here that we've already hired our VP of Sales. The district managers or regional sales managers will start in the next week or week and a half, and they'll do the final screenings for our sales force, who we've been in contact with over the past year and are very excited to get started. In the next phase, we'll focus on establishing a beachhead with our highly productive physicians and fully AI-targeted digital campaign, and this is the part where we're really gonna be focused on core group of prescribers who are very productive. They see a lot of hyperhidrosis patients.
We're gonna get to them early and often, and we will be able to see the fruits of our full digital campaign come to fruition, and then following that, soon after, because of the real-time data that we receive, we're gonna expand and optimize our promotional mix, which may result in calling on additional physicians, but more likely result in expansion of targets via the digital campaign, and it's this time, and by this time, we should have a very good idea of how Sofdra will perform, and most importantly, how we can maximize the growth. Next slide, please, Matt. Now, since we last spoke, we've had a few new insights to our patient population.
So we've said this multiple times before, and if you recall, we previously discussed the 16 million hyperhidrosis patients in the United States, 10 of which have primary axillary hyperhidrosis, and there's 3.7 million of the patients who've been diagnosed in the past year. When we took a look back further than just the past year, let's say over the past decade, we saw that 70% of all primary axillary hyperhidrosis patients have been diagnosed. This is a key insight for us 'cause it impacts the speed at which we believe we can motivate these patients to act, and just as important, know that many of them have likely already met the insurance criteria to receive Sofdra. So pretty big upside for us there with regard to the insight and information that's actionable immediately. Next slide, please, Matt.
So let me give you a quick update on the Sales force progress. As I said earlier, we hired our VP of sales, who will finalize the hiring of our three field managers next week. They'll finalize their teams over the next few months, and the sales representatives will complete a home study and attend a live launch meeting at the end of January, with selling starting immediately afterward. So this is the actual territory alignment that we have, focused where the patients and the physicians are located. So we spoke to this earlier. There's about 4,500 physicians that write the vast majority of prescriptions in medical dermatology, and here's where the majority of those physicians are located.
So there's gonna be three regions with nine sales professionals per region, and whenever there's any white space or a non-covered physician who's highly productive, we do get to them digitally, and we also get to them at conferences and other opportunities. But the vast majority, as I said earlier, is covered here by the field force. Next slide. So over the past few months, in leading up to the launch meeting, we've focused on creating and testing the imagery and messages that we'll use to educate both physicians and patients on the features and benefits of Sofdra.
So we've been working on the positioning for quite some time now, but now, since the raise, we've had the opportunity to go in, shoot the images or start to plan and shoot the images that we're gonna be able to use in our creative to test this meticulously to ensure that it works, it's acceptable, it's motivating, and it's actionable. And then ultimately create the materials, again, that the sales force will use and those materials we'll use in our digital campaign. Next slide, please. So let's talk about the patient experience program. We're able to engage a highly qualified segment of our priority targets here. We're very excited about this, and we're very grateful to be able to work with the International Hyperhidrosis Society.
Lisa, over the years, over 20 years, has attracted quite a following and has a database that we'll utilize to target patients so that we can gain insights from them on how to ensure that our platform is working as it should be. At points in the patient experience program, participants will be able to take surveys. They'll be asked to take surveys and give feedback on telemedicine and the product access experience. Patient feedback from these survey responses will be used to improve the program itself. The patient experience program is gonna really provide our first revenues data on conversion rates for prospective patients, and help us to prepare for the full commercial launch in Q1 and ultimately the expansion by June. Next slide, please.
So Lisa's grown the IHHS into the world's largest organization dedicated to hyperhidrosis. So these members have self-selected. They provided information about their condition, their diagnosis, and they receive regular information about new treatments, studies, and other tips to manage the condition. So here's how this is gonna work: We're gonna send this out to a small group of patients at the beginning, and there, there's going to be webinars and other discussions that Lisa will have with this core group so that we can take their information that they give us back and immediately make any necessary changes to the platform. Now, keep in mind, we've been testing this platform the entire time. We're really fine-tuning it, and those individuals will provide that much-needed information. They'll also get to be the very first to experience Sofdra.
Post that, we're gonna send out multiple communications to the balance of the 18,000 further target patients that have raised their hand, saying that they have hyperhidrosis, to be able to not only get the product, it's gonna help us further test and scale the platform and be ready for the representatives in the full digital launch in January. Next slide, please. So, well, look. The process is fairly simple, though it took quite a bit of work with both Lisa's group and our internal group here to make sure that everything is gonna go off without a hitch. But they'll receive an email invite. They'll be able to click through to telehealth. From there, immediate diagnosis if they desire, or they can certainly schedule one in the future.
We're gonna be, and Lisa's going to be, educating them to get in as soon as possible, so we can test the system and get the product. I think what's most important here, you, you heard from Lisa, you're gonna hear from George at UpScript, and Bill from SendRx is listening in. The leadership at each of these organizations, that will touch every part of the program, is really fully committed to its success, and we wanna make sure that the appropriate patients get Sofdra. We wanna make sure that their experience is flawless throughout. Thank you, Matt.
Thanks, Howie. I'm gonna hand over now to Jay Manara, who's gonna take us through some of the digital approach, particularly in relation to how we find and engage patients. So Jay, over to you. I think you're on mute, Jay, so.
Let me try that one more time. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, everyone. I'm Jay Manara, Senior Vice President of Media Strategy and Planning at Klick Health. A quick intro to Klick and who we are: established in 1997, Klick Health is the world's largest independent commercialization partner for clients and brands in the life sciences, focused on redefining the boundaries of health by developing, launching, and supporting brands to achieve their launch potential. We provide best-in-class marketing and advertising services within our specialized offerings. Some highlights. You know, this year, Klick received several agency distinctions from the most respected advertising award shows in the world.
We were named Clio Health's Independent Agency of the Year for the second consecutive year, and we were also recognized this year at the Cannes Lions Awards as the number two healthcare agency in the world, number two healthcare network agency in the world, and the number three independent agency in the world. Next slide, Matt. Thank you. We're exclusively healthcare focused, and we have deep dermatology expertise, and this unique approach is truly powered by connecting our marketing and comms approach to our deep medical and scientific understanding, which is powered by over 185 post-graduate in-house medical experts. This slide highlights our healthcare expertise across the various therapeutic areas, and some specific to those within the dermatology category. Next slide, please.
As we dive into our strategic approach for launch, our areas of focus, where we choose to invest, and how we go to market with precision, we've redefined the traditional mass market approach, and have the tools and technology at our disposal to narrow down and focus in on meeting the unmet needs of the most treatment-ready Softra patients. If we look at the top of this portion of the funnel, we can see the U.S. population. We then drill down to the volume of patients experiencing hyperhidrosis symptoms at approximately 16 million, and we drill down further to 10 million who suffer from axillary hyperhidrosis, as Vince mentioned, is categorized by excessive underarm sweating under the arms. The good news here is, based on insurance health claim data sets, we already know and have identified approximately 7 million of these patients who have been diagnosed.
Out of these 7 million diagnosed, approximately 3.7 million have been diagnosed within the past 12 months, and the other 3.3 million have, who have been diagnosed beyond a 12-month period. Based on our health claim data targeting sets, we can identify these audiences, we can validate their medical need, where they are in their personal treatment journey, and we can leverage these targeting data sets to engage them when they need it most. If we look on the right side of the chart in blue here, the remaining approximately 3 million patients who are under-diagnosed. Good news is we can also identify these patients through various online behaviors and over-the-counter shopping behavior. Now, this next visualization is an illustrative walkthrough of the various tools in our toolbox, and how we utilize various health data and online behavioral signals to identify patients most in need, exactly when they need it.
Our first step in identifying the most qualified audiences was that health claim data sets that we just spoke about in the prior slide. These targeting data sets allow us to identify and target de-identified patient segments in a HIPAA-compliant way, based on the status of their diagnosis, the recency of their diagnosis, where they are in their journey, and how they're actively engaged with physicians seeking solution options. From there, we drill down into other online behavioral signals, like content engagement. Where are they online? What websites and content are they engaging with? Are they on health websites reading about hyperhidrosis? Are they looking for treatment options? So think of our big health publishers in the U.S., like WebMD, Healthline, Mayo Clinic. These audiences who are on these platforms are highly qualified, highly active, and looking for solutions.
If we drill down to social conversations and sentiment, we know that this community is highly active on social media, not just only asking their peers and community groups for solutions, but also expressing and sharing their own patient experiences and symptoms. From these social behaviors online, we can pinpoint the moment of need and target via various social channels. From there, we can leverage search query data through all major platforms, whether it be Google, YouTube, Amazon, e-com platforms. We can identify patients, what they're looking for, what their unmet needs are, and help curate custom content to better serve them based on what they're looking for. We can overlay location data based on favorable market conditions, proximity to priority dermatology clinics. We can drill down into the interactivity between patient and HCP engagements, which really help us drill down into treatment options.
We can look at the OTC behaviors if they're looking at other treatments that are not Rx, and then really our, you know, the golden star really here is our Botanix first-party data signals, which are data sets we own and can leverage in perpetuity. These are our own website visitors, patients that enroll into our own patient enrollment program. So now one thing to keep in mind, those are all various data sets and tools in our toolbox. We don't leverage them all at the same time. We deploy these based on unique patient needs when they're seeking online, so this is how we identify them.
Now, this next slide then says, once we've identified them and targeted them, what are we gonna then deploy? So our first really objective in creating a digital ecosystem to accelerate trial is accelerating interest with our awareness drivers on the left, driving consideration to Sofdra.com, and fundamentally, all these, the sum of our efforts driving smooth trial via telehealth through UpScript. One thing to note here is that everything we are doing is we are able to optimize and change how we go to market based on real-time optimizations. Our optimization engine is beyond what I would call a media delivery KPI. Traditional mass market media delivery metrics often serve as auditing vanity metrics. Has something been deployed in the market? Have we invested money?
But it's missing a key critical element for optimization and refinement, which is the next part of the slide, and how Klick and Botanix is optimizing our plan based on true commercial objectives. Our true commercial objectives is, are our media efforts in the market reaching audiences of intent, i.e., diagnosed patients? Are they converting to, converting to brand post-exposure? And what is the cost effectiveness of our media in terms of driving a patient through that journey to script conversion? Now, this is just a blinded case based on a recent dermatology brand, but proves that this methodology, this precision approach, works, where we are focused on outsmarting and not outspending the category or the competitive set. This is a case where we in.
We took on a new brand this past year from another agency partnership, where within 4- months, compared to the last prior year in 2023, we were able to drive an increase in new patient starts on product, a plus 174% in patient increase, with 46% less investment, with a cost reduction in new patient acquisition of 81%. So we know that this is highly effective versus a mass market traditional approach.
Thanks, Jay. Appreciate the insights there with respect to patient targeting. I'm gonna hand over now to George Jones, who is from our partner, UpScript, who have the telemedicine platform that we've incorporated into our broader go-to-market platform. So George, over to you.
Great. Thank you, Matt, I appreciate it. I can tell you UpScript is incredibly excited to participate in this discussion this morning and support the launch of Botanix's first commercial product. You know, I'd start by kind of speaking about the insight that Lisa shared a little bit earlier in the presentation regarding the hyperhidrosis patients really not to go in to see their doctors live, and their preference and desire for ease of access, and how high a priority that is for those patients. You know, given that, telemedicine is an absolute logical fit to support the launch of Sofdra for the treatment of hyperhidrosis.
So, you know, over the next couple of slides, I'm gonna take you through the state of telemedicine in the U.S., UpScript Health as a company, and how we're gonna support the launch of Sofdra gel. We're excited about that. If you can go back, sorry about that. You know, when you think about UpScript Health, we are truly the experience partner for pharmaceutical companies. We were founded in 2001. For the first 10, 15 years of the company, we were selling generic medicines online, and in about 2016, we shifted to support pharmaceutical companies. You can see the acceleration of those partnerships over the last, you know, 8 years or so.
You can also see the who's who of pharmaceutical companies, both large and small, from the top 10 companies to emerging pharmaceutical companies that are using telemedicine as a primary driver of their go-to-market strategy. So when looking at the patient path that we've developed in partnership with Botanix to support Sofdra gel, you can see here that the patient generally will start on the brand website, and we'll be working with Klick Health to make sure there's a seamless transition of qualified patients over to the product brand page, the Sofdra, the Get Sofdra product brand page. Patient will start by creating an account, then they will answer an online medical questionnaire.
That online medical questionnaire is critical in helping our clinicians gather the information that they need to make a treatment decision for a patient, but also to gather the information that is required to clear any prior authorizations and step edit, such as tried and failed medications, how long they were on the medicine, why they stopped taking the medicine. So this is gonna be absolutely critical part of the patient journey. They will schedule an appointment to meet with a clinician, if appropriate, and then they will either visit with a clinician via video, audio, and oftentimes, these visits can happen asynchronously, which means they are able to make a treatment decision without seeing the patient actually live.
If appropriate, the patient will get an electronic prescription. We will work with our partner, and Botanix's partner, SendRx, a true concierge service, to ensure that the patient gets rapid and affordable access to the medicine. We'll work back and forth with SendRx, our clinician group, as well as the health plans to clear any prior authorization, so it is a very seamless patient journey, and as we move forward to the next slide, we can share some of the stats on just how efficient and effective it is, so if you think about our key facts around UpScript and our service level, we've had 35,000 physician visits so far in 2024.
The median time from when the patient actually pays for the visit to when the visit is completed is just 17 hours. When I look back at the data, the shortest time was in 2 minutes. That the patient, you know, clicked to pay their credit card and actually saw a clinician. 62% of patient visits occur within 24 hours, and a lot of times, any delay past there is due to patients' choice of when they actually have time to schedule the appointment, but obviously much faster than the 4 weeks to 16 weeks that it takes to see a specialist in the United States these days. 18% of our visits occur within 2 hours.
We're able to support and onboard patients seven days a week, 24 hours a day, to access that online medical questionnaire, while providing access to clinicians from 6:00 A.M. to midnight Eastern Time. When a patient calls UpScript Health, our average time to answer is about 6 seconds. So, we put a high priority on that patient engagement and making sure there's a great experience for the patient. Our average time to engage with a patient and handle and can handle any issues that they may have is 4 minutes. So, as you can see, it's a very efficient and effective patient journey.
Thanks, George. Great introduction to the telemedicine part of the platform. I'm gonna hand across now to John Schohl , who's in charge of our managed markets. John's gonna give us an update on kind of where we are with reimbursement, and talk specifically to how we are gonna manage some of the obstacles that come with some of the payer engagement, and also progress in terms of finalizing things like price and contracting with some of those payers as well.
Thanks, Matt, and hello, everybody. It's nice to be able to speak with you again. I just wanted to let everyone know that the reimbursement plan for Sofdra is on track. As a reminder, primary axillary hyperhidrosis in the United States is reimbursed as a medical condition and under the pharmacy benefit. So it does not require any type of a separate code in order for the patients to be able to receive it. We have had discussions with the key payer accounts over the past number of months, and the response has been very positive, very positive. In our conversations, we have been able to bucket the patients into the following coverage access bucket, so to speak.
We will see patients that will be able to get Sofdra with no restrictions whatsoever. We've also heard from payers that they may put a minor obstacle. Payers sometimes will use a prior authorization and/or a step edit in order to manage prescription coverage. We also have some payers that are going to put Sofdra into a non-formulary bucket, where it will be subject to review by the payer on a individual basis. We're well prepared to handle that scenario. And then obviously, we will have some payers that will not cover a product like Sofdra. So overall, in the case of Sofdra, as I said, the obstacles the payers use are ensuring the patient actually has the medical condition, which is not uncommon.
So we would expect to see some type of a prior authorization to label, which generally is a confirmation of an age appropriate diagnosis code, things like that. We also, as I said, will have some plans that will require the patients to have tried and attest to a failure on an OTC or prescription aluminum chloride product, like a Drysol. So overall, we've been very pleased with the conversations with the payers and the feedback from them. And again, all commercial patients who receive Sofdra will have a zero out-of-pocket pharmacy copay cost, which we think is also a great benefit to the patients. Next slide, please.
So this is the comprehensive list of what we've been doing over the past 6 months, and we are fully engaged with clinical and financial discussions with all these targeted accounts. And just as a reminder, we've been engaging these accounts since February, March of this year. We went in to introduce Botanix to the accounts. We were able to provide an introduction of Sofdra before approval with the appropriate clinical information that we had. We swiftly switched over after approval to a much more aggressive clinical discussion with the key accounts, meeting with their clinical teams, and able to provide the post-approval clinical information to the accounts. We introduced pricing to them mid-summer, began to get them comfortable with the pricing of Sofdra.
And over the last 35 to 45 days, we've been aggressively engaged with them in terms of finalizing, as Matt said, the contracts and the reimbursement outcome that we would expect to see with a product like Sofdra. So, yes, we are well on our way to successfully implementing the reimbursement plan. Next slide, please. So this is what we expect Sofdra's coverage to be. As you can see on the left, we are focusing on the commercial lines, and we expect that we will see about a third of the patients will have the ability to get Sofdra covered with no restrictions.
We see that a number of, as I said, a number of plans, about 35% of the commercial lives, will impose some type of, again, PA to validate an age or a diagnosis requirement. And then some will also ask about an attestation by a physician if the patient has tried and failed an over-the-counter or prescription aluminum chloride product. As I mentioned, we have that third bucket, which is the plans will also require some type of or some plans will require some type of a more in-depth review of the patient's condition. So we expect about 90% of the patients to be able to get Sofdra with some type of coverage, which is very, very encouraging.
If you look to the right, you'll see we created this bucket where we're now including government programs. Government lives, I should say. Medicaid, state Medicaid programs that we're actively engaging with now that we have an approved product. They really wouldn't talk to us until we had an approved product. The VA, which is the Veterans Administration, and TRICARE, which covers active and retired military lives. So you can see that when you begin to add those lives into the Sofdra coverage bucket, the story gets even better. You know, we're fully expect to have well over 94% coverage of some type with Sofdra. So we're very encouraged with the plan that we've laid out, where we're at, and yeah. So thank you very much. Matt?
All right. Thank you very much to our presenters and panelists. If you go to the next slide, I wanna take you back to the planned commercial timeline. The stars at the top represent our planned communications with the investor community and our supporters. With progress, key metrics like response rates, click-through rates, prescriptions filled, number of prescriptions, number of patients, refills, and other important metrics that will inform us of the performance of Sofdra. While we continue to work on this plan, we're in short order going to engage commercial patients, as I said earlier, to optimize the platform. And ultimately, during this time period, we're gonna reach. Our goal is to reach over a million of those patients.
January, and our work up until then, will allow us to do this, establish a beachhead with our most highly productive physicians, and launch our fully targeted AI digital campaign. And finally, we want to expand our promotional mix, expand and optimize our promotional mix, as we move through. And it's at that point in June that again, we'll really have a good idea of the future and potential growth of Sofdra. So our focus is clear. We're very excited to reach this commercial stage and the milestone in our company's history. We believe that Sofdra has the potential to make a very positive impact on a large patient population. And Sofdra's commercial success continues to be built on three pillars. The first, ensure we take advantage of this large market opportunity.
Again, 16 million patients have hyperhidrosis, and we forget sometimes that's the third largest dermatological condition out there. 10 million with primary axillary, and we now know that 7 million of them are diagnosed, and as Jay said earlier, that's the basis for all of our targeting, so we want to convert a solid percentage of the 3.7 million that are already in the physician office with our field force, who will be ready to go again post their launch meeting in January, and just activate even a small percentage of the other 6.3 million patients who have hyperhidrosis but aren't seeing a physician currently, although most of them have seen a physician in the past. Create frictionless access with telemedicine.
We wanna make sure we provide these patients immediate and comfortable access to online diagnosis, and rapidly move them from diagnosis to prescription utilizing our platform, and then ensure, as our third point, speed to patient and that they get every single refill. We avoid distributor fees and other costs by using this direct fulfillment. We ensure that patients get the refill every time to drive positive patient outcomes and with that, profitability. And again, I'd like to say that every single person, every one of our partners who's touching this, has committed, not just with their time and their effort, but to be here as well, and they'll be available for our Q and A session post this.
But just to close, if we focus on these three things, we believe we're going to be very successful in our ability to reach this very large patient population who's been underserved for quite some time. So Matt, I'll turn it back over to you for questions, and thank everybody for their time.
Thanks, Howie, and I'll invite our panelists to come back on screen, please. We've got a bunch of questions that have been flowing through while we've been talking, so I'm gonna try and throw some of those out as I try and consolidate those as well. Maybe we'll start with Lisa, given that she was first up. There's a question here, Lisa, around one of the first slides that you put up, which is around likelihood of trying a new product. And the comment here from Mark is, it sounds like it's a choice between OTC products rather than, say, Sofdra and another RX or prescription product, like Qbrexza. So maybe to you, Lisa, is that how you kind of see the survey data, and is that a surprise to you?
So we constructed that question very intentionally, because the real-world experience of a hyperhidrosis patient is always trying OTC antiperspirants first. In fact, everyone here on this call and in front of me here on the screen has an OTC antiperspirant in their cabinet. But with hyperhidrosis patients, they probably have one in their glove compartment, one or two in their desk, another one, you know, just hidden everywhere because they're always trying to manage their sweating. And it's always that they try OTC antiperspirants versus Qbrexza. Qbrexza is tried by only a small percentage of those who have axillary hyperhidrosis, and in fact, for the people who we surveyed, we asked them if they tried Qbrexza, and it was a teeny, tiny number.
So if we were to ask them to compare a new treatment with Qbrexza, they would have no idea what to compare it to. So it's sort of like asking someone to compare if they liked this certain fruit with another fruit that they've never eaten. So we wanted to make sure that we were asking them about something that's very familiar to them. And the other part of this is that the attributes of Sofdra are most similar to an antiperspirant, to an OTC antiperspirant, because there is ease of access, because you do it at home, it's topical, there are no pills, no needles, and no aluminum, which is very important to patients. So, yeah, it was very intentional to compare this new product to something that they are exceedingly familiar with, and very frustrated with, which is the OTC antiperspirant space.
Right. Thanks, Lisa. That actually picks up a question from Dev here in relation to kind of side effects and seriousness. But maybe I'll just pile on top here, Lisa, if I can, with another question, which is around that, you know, which things are most important, so access, and price, and not going to the doctor's office. And you mentioned in your introduction about the importance of not having to go to the doctor's office. Do you wanna maybe elaborate on that as well, please?
Sure. I could have a whole, you know, big, long conversation about that, honestly. So, a few things here. So the hyperhidrosis community is very frustrated with their experience with physicians. So they've been disappointed a lot, they've been turned away a lot, they get dismissed often. So, yeah, going to a dermatologist's office isn't their, they haven't had great experiences there in the real world, in their life, in their patient journey. The other thing is, and this is not talked about enough in my opinion, that hyperhidrosis starts, especially axillary hyperhidrosis, it starts in high school. So what happens between someone in high school and when they are, when hyperhidrosis probably wanes, no one's researched this, but it probably wanes around the age of 60, if you will. So in those years, those years are very productive, families, jobs, schools.
With all the demands on your time, trying to get to a doctor and find a dermatologist that actually will set an appointment for you, and you don't have to wait three, four, six months out, and that they actually know about the different treatment options. You see, there are so many hurdles. Honestly, finding treatment for hyperhidrosis should be an Olympic sport. But so here we have it. This access is so important, and being able to have agency to take care of your problem at home, you know, while you have kids running around, you have, you know, your PhD you're working on, what have you. So let people manage their own condition with a product that's safe and effective is what they've been asking for since they started, since we started.
Excellent.
That answer? Thanks.
Excellent. So we've got a couple questions here on the market, so maybe Howie, I can give this to you. So, Will and Josh, a couple of questions around market penetration, particularly, the newer insight that 7 million patients have had a diagnosis within the last 10 years, 3.7 of those within the last year or so. How does that change your approach to the market, knowing that there's a lot more that have been diagnosed than initially thought from the data available?
Yeah, it certainly elevates our understanding of the unmet need in this population. You know, when we thought only 3.7 of the 10 million had really been diagnosed, we're active and were actively seeking a solution, we were actually excited about that because there's a pretty motivated patient population there. Now, with the 7 of the 10 already having a diagnosis, it changes the way we're approaching all of these patients and how we communicate to them, and the speed at which they're going to get treatment.
So think of it this way, if a patient has no idea that they have a condition, they may know something's wrong, but they don't know what it is, they have to first learn what the condition is before you can teach them about what the treatment options are, and ultimately persuade them that your treatment option is the best treatment option for them. Here, they know that something is wrong. They know exactly what it is. They've likely tried something else, and most have, therefore, we just need to put a better option in front of them and make sure that they get it every single time. The second, and just as important, if not more, because they've tried something else, they can then attest that they certainly have tried and failed another treatment option.
With that said, they're then able to navigate any prior authorization or step edit that potentially stands in their way. So if you recall, John just said, you know, about 37% have completely unrestricted access, but there was a percentage there equal to that that required a prior auth or step edit. This tells us that these individuals have already overcome that. So very encouraging and certainly changes the way we're gonna message and ultimately expect the PA to be overcome for these patients. Another question, Matt?
Sorry, talking to myself. So just saying that that leads into a question that, that Michael's asked here in relation to: will patients be able to get a physician attestation that they've tried and failed alternative treatments? Maybe do you wanna talk to that yourself or John, about, you know, what that obstacle is and how the system allows you to deal with that particular obstacle? Howie, do you wanna take that one? Or John—
Yeah. I'm sorry, I thought you called George for that.
No, absolutely. So it's multifold. Certainly, a physician can provide that attestation, and let's just talk about what that is. Somebody has to attest or, you know, give their word that they've tried something else, and it didn't work for them, or maybe they had side effects, maybe it wasn't efficacious, all right? Ultimately, the physician has to get that information from the patient. On all of our intakes, so whether it be through UpScript Health or through SendRx, we ask the patient which therapies have they tried and failed in the past. So we're immediately collecting all of that information, and so for the vast majority of patients, we're already gonna have that attestation on the patient's behalf.
Whenever somebody comes through telemedicine, and we spoke to this in the past, we've spent the past year. Really Bill and George have spent the past year ensuring that their systems work flawlessly with regard to sharing information. So when that patient comes in to SendRx, that information is provided back to UpScript Health, and vice versa. So it allows us to have that attestation ready to go at any given time, which is one of the big reasons that UpScript has 100% PA submissions and are very successful at doing so.
All right. Thanks, Howie. Maybe it's a good transition to George here. We've got a question from Ben about the process for educating UpScript physician consultants. And maybe as part of that, just combine that with a question from Nigel here in relation to why hyperhidrosis is a good fit for telemedicine. So if you maybe want to talk to those two issues, please.
Yeah, I can speak to the first one first. So the UpScript, UpScript has a network of approximately 200 clinicians that are on our platform and that work with UpScript. For each of the programs that we launch, our clinicians will opt in to support that program in order to get the 50-state coverage that we spoke about, and the hours of 6:00 A.M. to midnight coverage that we spoke about. So once those clinicians have opted in and said that they would like to work with and treat patients with hyperhidrosis on the platform, we will work with our partner, Botanix, in this case, to develop a training program for those clinicians.
So those clinicians will get a full and robust training by both our head of medical, but also importantly, the head of medical from Botanix, or from our partner. That person is obviously an expert in the condition, as well as an expert in the product that we will be treating with. So this ensures that our clinicians have, you know, 100% awareness of the product and comfort with the product by opting in to be part of the program. So kind of that dovetails quite nicely into the, you know, the treatment of hyperhidrosis via telemedicine.
When we take on any partnership, we really do a deep review of the therapeutic area and the product at hand, and identify that the treatment, a product condition could be diagnosed online by asking a series of questions in that medical questionnaire, and that a treatment decision could be made by those answering those questions. We felt that hyperhidrosis is a perfect fit for the telemedicine platform to be able to help these patients. That, coupled with some of the things that Lisa spoke about around frustration, about time to care, and the rapidity that these patients would like to get care, again, we felt the telemedicine platform or channel was perfect for Sofdra.
Thanks, George. So maybe a follow-on here for Bill. So George, you're at the front end, obviously, you're taking the patients in. Bill, you're at the back end in fulfilling those prescriptions. So there's a question here from Roger around your capacity to send. So obviously, you deal with more than one product, not just the Botanix Sofdra product. So, can you tell us about your capacity to be able to send and deal with obviously, a number of patients coming through the system?
Correct. So we're very fortunate in that we have seven locations that are part of our network, and we have licensed in all 50 states. We have the capacity to send more than 2.5 million prescriptions currently. And we are continuing to evolve and grow that capacity, quarter by quarter going forward. So we look forward to partnering with our partners, including Botanix, to continue to grow our capacity as their business continues to grow and evolve.
Right. Thanks, Bill. Jay, a question here for you. So you showed a number of different ways of engaging patients in the waterfall chart. The question here is, do you do all those at once, or do you do one, then try the next one, or how does that kind of work from a patient engagement approach?
It's actually one-to-one, uniquely triggered, based on patient demand, what they are looking for online within the channels they're looking. We are not flipping a switch and turning media channels on. We are being agile and responsive to meeting to a patient need within the channels they're seeking. So we use that data signal, whether it be search, health publishers, to identify the need. Once we can identify that need, we deploy the tactic, and we then only pay and execute that tactic once we validate the patient need is there.
Right. Thanks, Jay. So maybe just a follow-on question here while we have you, which is around the responsiveness of that patient engagement. So obviously, you know, traditionally you'd have direct-to-consumer TV ads to drive a patient into a physician, to hope that they get their prescription, and then, you know, a couple of months later, you figure out whether your ad worked. How is it different on, on digital ads in terms of being able to adjust that message?
I think with digital, we have an explicit cause and effect attribution to our effort to business outcome. In traditional mass market TV approach, you spend a lot of money within TV. There's a high cost of entry, and based on long-lagging metrics, which are typically measured in quarterly brand health survey-based research, you know if audiences who've been exposed to the ad, have potential future intent. Those brand health metrics from traditional TV advertising are metrics like, am I aware of the brand? Am I familiar with the brand, and would I consider the brand, as a preferred option in the future? That is a very soft, non-explicit, directional impact metric. In the world of digital, we can explicitly trace a patient from search query to a health website, to exactly what they engage in, to exactly which patient populations land onto Sofdra.com.
So the explicitness of the correlation is much more defined, and our ability to tailor the investments to which tactics, based on commercial objectives, are. The correlation is much stronger.
Super. Thanks. We've got a couple of questions coming in here for John, but there's Anne and Janelle just asking a question around the frequency of refill. So I think I could probably take that one, which is monthly. So the bottle that you get has a month's supply, 30 days or 31-day supply. And that's renewed every month, and that's what Bill will be sending out by FedEx to all of the patients in the U.S. John, the question here for you is, you mentioned i n your slide that you're expecting to have either no restrictions from payers, or one restriction, which is do they have the condition? Or the other one being, do they have the condition, and can they attest that they've tried another product? So the question here is, how sure are you of that? And what makes you so confident that they are the obstacles, and obviously the system has been set up to address?
Yeah, no, thank you. It's a good question, really good question. And I would say that, as I mentioned, you know, we've been engaging with the payers since for over 6- months. I've had multiple points of contact with all the accounts that were listed. And the feedback from them consistently is that if we do anything, and just a reminder, you know, 35%, 36% of the commercial lives we believe will have no restrictions whatsoever on Sofdra going, being approved.
But even when they do put a restriction or something in place, we have confirmed and seen already in some of the clinical literature. It will be a PA to label, which again is age and a diagnosis or and/or. I should say, and/or, a attestation of a trial and failure of a product like a prescription or OTC product or aluminum chloride. And as you said, you know, we have a mechanism in place, we believe, to capture that information ahead of time, attest to it for the physicians, and meet that requirement that the payers may impose on us. So, yeah, we feel very confident because of our engagements with the payers over the past six-plus months.
Aaron asks the direct question here as a follow-up, John. So they can't make a patient try Qbrexza or Botox as a precondition to getting on the product. That doesn't sound like that's one of those obstacles you're worried about.
No. You know, again, in our discussions with them, we have not had that brought up as a potential roadblock or a potential step through. We also are very careful, and as we are negotiating our rebate agreements with the payers, to make sure that we're including language that doesn't allow for that to happen. So we're making sure that we will allow a PA to label and/or a trial and failure on OTC or prescription strength aluminum chloride product. Otherwise, you know, we're not gonna contract with that account. But to answer your question directly, no, no one has come to us yet and said, we want you to have Qbrexza be used in place or in first line before Sofdra. No.
Right. Thank you. We've got about 8 minutes left here, so I'm gonna go to you, Howie, on a couple of questions here. Question here from Michael: You're gonna start with the patient experience program with the International Hyperhidrosis Society, and it sounds like you're gonna expand then to some other highly qualified patients. Why do that before putting a sales force in the field? What's the thinking about the order of doing that?
You know, first and foremost, January is a very good month to make the transition to have your new field force out. We've said that multiple times over the years. When that opportunity is there, we should take advantage of it. You don't always have that choice. But if you think of the cadence, right, or the launch kind of order here, we're putting this out to over a million patients prior to the reps being in the field. So there's an opportunity digitally to go out and have these patients participate in telehealth, utilize the platform, and be ready to get their refill prior to a sales rep going to a physician. Now, we have the sales launch meeting. Those sales reps go out post.
They go to these physicians in their practices, and a couple things happen. You know, number one, things are working, you know, perfectly in that scenario. In these physicians, especially in dermatology, access and systems working as they should is one of the largest reasons why they prescribe, right? Or said another way, after safety and efficacy, if the patient doesn't have access to the product and the fulfillment process is not frictionless, they tend to not write it again. But if it is frictionless, they write quite a bit more of it. So, you know, just to summarize, opportunity to get quite a few patients on board, and then ultimately, optimize the program with their feedback and get refills prior to the reps being in the field.
By the time the reps do get to the field, they're able to get to these high-volume prescribers and ensure that the promise we make of their patients getting it every time can be met. And it helps us also. We're not taking on that cost burden prior to being confident that everything is going to work as it should, number 1. But number 2, we're not giving up opportunity, because we are going to get to a million patients or at least put the offer in front of over a million patients prior to the launch of the field force.
So just as a follow-up there from Aaron, you're expecting to generate revenue before some of your salespeople are in the field, and I think the answer to that is yes.
Yes, absolutely.
Great. Thank you. Conscious of time here, I'm just gonna hit a last couple of questions here for the team. Howie, do you wanna? A couple of comments here about kind of who's been hired and where are those people gonna be?
Mm-hmm.
So we showed the sales people map of the U.S. What about the rest of the organization in terms of marketing and sales and those sorts of hires as well? How well progressed are they?
Yeah, so we have hired a marketing team here at Botanix, located in Phoenix. You've met Boris in the past, our Chief Business Officer. He's built out his team and sales operations to ensure that everything with regard to our data warehouse and our ability to optimize our spend with the plethora of data we're going to get from UpScript, from SendRx, from Klick and the other areas is utilized and owned in-house, right? We've hired the VP of Sales. All of the regional sales managers have been recruited. He will finalize their transition over the next week and a half. So, you know, when you think about it, you have the sales head, you have the sales leadership ready to go.
We have all of the candidates, and have been talking to the sales representatives over the past 6- months. We want those regional sales managers to finalize which of the top three candidates they wanna hire. And we do have other individuals in you know, manufacturing with pharmacovigilance partners, et cetera. So, you know, in the absence of going through the whole org structure, we currently have a independent pharmaceutical company in place, and ready to meet all of the, you know, requirements or support needed for sales demand, but also to keep us regulatory compliant, right, from that perspective. So a lot of work has gone on since we were in Australia last to build to that, but our infrastructure is here and functioning, and functioning quite well.
Thank you. So Vince, you've escaped so far, but I've got a couple of questions here for you maybe if you wanna bring us home. One of the questions here from Alex is in relation to the platform. You spent a lot of time and money and effort on developing that platform. Is it suitable for other products as well?
Yeah. Yes. As we look at the platform, one of the things that we've engineered into the platform is to be able to put multiple products on top of it. As you heard today, for hyperhidrosis, it's a perfect match in what we're looking to do to acquire these patients and run them through the platform. But we believe there's a host of dermatologic diseases, common skin diseases, that other products could be acquired and put right on top of this platform as we continue to build on it.
Right, and so maybe a follow-on question from David as well, which is, you know, "It sounds like there are other opportunities out there. Have there been, you know, inbound interest for the company in relation to the asset and/or the platform?
Yes, yes. I, as we've moved towards commercialization, the number of inbound inquiries has gone up exponentially here for the company. I think this is a very interesting time in dermatology right now. We're seeing some movement of products, products that companies are not gonna launch on their own, or products that are in the portfolios right now that are not being promoted, that could be very suitable for us to potentially acquire and put on our platform. I think for us, with our focus, the most important thing, as you've heard, over the last hour and a half, is our laser focus on Sofdra, making it a commercial success, and it being the first product to move through our platform here and begin our journey to revenue generation as a new company here.
All right, thanks. So maybe from a timing perspective, we'll leave it there. I do have to share with you one final comment we got from David, which is, as mom and dad investors buying into Botanix at eight cents a share, we've had a great return on investment. My family's rooting for you. So thank you, David. We're also rooting for ourselves, as we come into this really important execution stage, with the product getting into the market. I'd like to thank all of our presenters and panelists who attended here tonight, Bill, George, Howie, Vince, Jay, Chris, Lisa, and John. We will be recording. We did record this presentation. It will be up on our website at some stage in the coming days.
Feel free to re-watch it. We do appreciate the support that we have from our retail and our institutional investors, both in Australia and around the world, and we look forward to a lot of exciting news in the coming months as we launch the product and then update the market on some of the successes that we will have. So with that, we'll close the webinar. Thank you again, and we look forward to talking to you at another time.
Thank you.