American Well Corporation Morgan Stanley 24th Annual Global Healthcare Conference

Well, I appreciate the opportunity, and thanks again for having me here. The military and the opportunity underscoring where we have pivoted over the past two years to principally focus on the government opportunities as well as domestic payers came about as a result of a probably five-year-old relationship now with the DHA. When they came to us seeking a platform that can enable all of their clinicians to reach any of the service men and women and their families with video compliant and security protocols that had not previously existed, it was a fresh build for us. It was an undertaking that we believed we can accomplish in a period of approximately a year and a half. Along the way, we got to understand and to know the individuals who were involved in that decision-making.

Clearly, many people in those government positions have changed, but their focus on enabling care and moving towards an innovative technological solution for all of their services, underscoring the need for the compliance with the MHS GENESIS Oracle-based platform, was something that held true throughout. Our first really dipping the toe into that experience was launching with the DHA and covering now approximately 10 million service members. We also were invited in from an opportunity that the VA, I think very timely, of course, after we've now had two years of successful service past our initial implementation point.

The VA came to us with a very similar need, and I think the validation from their colleagues down the hall led to us having an opportunity to present, to validate some of the ROI, and the ability to launch and to rely on a platform that is going to service, yet again, another cohort of approximately 10 million veterans.

Well, we're certainly looking forward to being direct, but at the same time, it's somewhat of a bittersweet change. Leidos and some of the other partners were absolutely wonderful. They essentially held our hand throughout this process and guided us towards successful implementation and launch. Their project managers have tremendous experience. The tenure of many of the individuals on their team really helped lead us to a successful launch. I don't believe we would be able to have done that in the timeframe that we did. We would have had the normal growing pains and stumbled, and I think we were very fortunate to have had them leading us through this process.

Now that we're going direct, we're going through some of the initial challenges, going through contracting and pricing and working on a number of things that we had hoped would have been completed about a month or 2 ago. But we're now getting to know people and form relationships. Also, the fact that there are people involved who weren't there at the initial launch. So it takes time. Relationship-building is going on. The contracting is coming into place. And we hope to be in a place where we can announce a longer-term direct contract over the next several weeks.

Well, so the letter of intent is specifically to the VA. So that's one opportunity that I can tell you the VA had been looking at options for the past 2 years. They went through a diligence process of at least a year and then announced to us this year their intent to move forward with us. Also, changes in the VA that have now led to them having to go back and essentially review and appoint new individuals to now lead in the contracting process, which they've made it clear to us they would like to have completed prior to the year-end.

Got it. Anything on the competitive nature of this in terms of as they kind of evaluated you and potentially others out there in the- Well, we certainly know there were competitors because we're constantly being critiqued, or I should say, criticized in scope, in optionality around the Amwell Platform, as well as pricing.

It's still in a very meaningful way being addressed at basic contract levels today. We're not close to signing in the next several weeks, but we hope to be there in the next couple of months.