The new majority owner of a Montgomery County medical device company is banking on an old strategy to turn around the stagnant business. The company, Strata Skin Sciences of Horsham, manufactures and markets the Xtrac laser system approved to treat patients with four types of skin disorders— psoriasis, vitiligo, eczema and leukoderma — using highly concentrated beams of ultraviolet-B light

Health care entrepreneur Dolev Rafaeli became CEO of Strata about a month ago after Accelmed acquired a majority stake in the company. Rafaeli is well-acquainted with the Xtrac device having served as CEO of PhotoMedex, which initially brought the excimer laser system to the market, from 2011 to 2015. During that time Xtrac’s revenues climbed from $8 million to $26.6 million, writes John George in the Philadelphia Business Journal.

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PhotoMedex and invest heavily in direct-to-consumer advertising. “We’re going to do what we did before,” he said. “And we are going to do it with the same people, most of whom never left.”

Rafaeli said PhotoMedex was spending $5 million on direct-to-consumer advertising for Xtrac while he was CEO, but after the company changed hands that budget dropped to zero by the third quarter of 2107.

“In 2015, 90 percent of our advertising was television and radio spots and our acquisition cost to get one patient to make one appointment was $500,” he said. “Now fast forward to 2018 and we know much more about our patients. We have a database with hundreds of thousands of patients who have used the Xtrac system. We know who they are, what their interests are, what blogs they look at, what ads they look at on social media and which they don’t. Our patient acquisition cost is south of $200.”

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