In its biggest Canadian deal to date, HelloMD is now providing health practitioner advice through the Shoppers Drug Mart medical cannabis website to streamline access for patients.

“We worked tremendously hard to be awarded this business, and being selected by Shoppers is that crowning jewel that we’ve been building towards,” says Larry Lisser, senior vice-president of business development at HelloMD.

The Medical Cannabis by Shoppers website was already up and running in Ontario and Alberta, but now it features a dedicated consultation portal operated by HelloMD.

“The challenge that they had was that patients were coming to the site, and many of them barely knew cannabis, and if they didn’t already have the [medical] authorization, they couldn’t continue. You just can’t proceed to purchasing in the e-commerce portal unless you have the documents authorized by a practitioner. So our solution was to create a dedicated telehealth portal on their behalf,” says Lisser.

Patients in Ontario and Alberta can now access live video consultations with licensed healthcare practitioners remotely in order to obtain a medical document similar to a prescription. Once that document is submitted, patients can purchase dried cannabis, capsules and cannabis oil through the Shoppers website.

“For someone who is new to medical cannabis, there’s nothing more valuable than being able to talk to a licenced medical practitioner,” says Lisser.

It’s also essential to medical cannabis sales. For example, Alberta’s mandatory cannabis retail staff training program SellSafe notes that customers who ask for help or information to use legal recreational cannabis for medical purposes should be referred to their doctor or other medical professional.

The Shoppers deal is big for HelloMD, but because it demonstrates that there is a way to bring medical cannabis into the mainstream, it’s also exciting for the global industry, says Lisser.

“It says that the online pharmacy model can work,” he says.

Shoppers Drug Mart, a subsidiary of grocery giant Loblaw Companies Limited, operates more than 1,300 retail drug stores across Canada. The deal expands HelloMD’s client base, and would lower barriers for patients with limited mobility, or simply wanting privacy, convenience and discretion.

Since its launch in California in 2015, HelloMD’s platform has delivered more than 100,000 virtual consults between medical cannabis patients and licensed practitioners, the company says. The company has been operating in Canada since last year, so its entire infrastructure is in place and mature, Lisser says.

“The only difference to us is really the demand on nurse practitioners,” who provide the virtual consultations, says Lisser. “So we just staff up accordingly,” he says, mostly by expanding schedules for nurse practitioners who are already in place.

HelloMD announced a similar partnership with Canada House Clinics Inc. in early 2019, one with Vancouver-based Wildflower Brands, and another in late 2018 with Sunniva Inc.