BrightInsight has just released a new suite of disease management tools at the BIO International Convention in San Diego. The new Disease Management Solution, which includes a patient app, healthcare provider interfaces and analytics dashboards, is designed to give biopharmaceutical and medtech companies pre-built, regulatory-compliant digital tools to improve patient engagement, symptom management and therapy adherence for their medicines and devices.
The new Disease Management Solution, built on BrightInsight’s compliant platform (which is built on the Google Cloud Platform), features applications their customers can easily configure to support improved communication with patients and providers. The platform is designed to help patients take their medications on time, as well as taking the appropriate dose, provide granular data on therapeutic impact and track patients’ overall quality of life.
“We developed this disease management solution to help biopharma and medtech companies bring their Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) to market faster,” said BrightInsight CEO and Co-founder Dr. Kal Patel. “This gives companies a proven template to develop unique digital offerings that will transform how their patients manage their conditions… and will create even more value for their therapies.”
Digital needs in competitive markets
BrightInsight’s new solution is the latest product the company has designed to help biopharma and medtech companies jumpstart their digital health offerings. In 2021 alone, BrightInsight completed seven SaMDs for their biopharma clients.
BrightInsight’s solutions have become increasingly popular, giving companies added flexibility to build, scale and maintain regulated digital health products, without having to contend with the growing pains that can be associated with in-house development.
“It can be a heavy lift for companies to create these digital solutions on their own,” said Patel. “They may not have the experience to understand all the nuances in the space, and that can really slow them down – it generally takes three or four years to get to market on their own. Even after that initial delay, their struggles may only be starting. The platform may not scale across products and geographies, for example. We take on those challenges, creating products that are regulatory-compliant, highly secure, ensure patient privacy and have built-in scalability. We’re not going to let our customers paint themselves into a corner.”
This is not an abstract need. Companies are becoming increasingly motivated to pursue digital solutions. Many patients have a hard time complying with their therapeutic regimens, costing the biopharma industry more than $600 billion each year. Digital products have tremendous potential to help resolve this and other issues.
“The biopharma industry is leveraging data and digital to accelerate drug development, improve therapy adherence and persistence, and enhance the patient journey, driving explosive growth in the regulated digital health market, which is expected to be a $56 billion global market by 2025,” said Karl Hick, former Chief Digital and Information Officer at Takeda and a member of BrightInsight’s Advisory Council. “For biopharma to build and launch regulated digital solutions efficiently and effectively, it will become critical to engage partners like BrightInsight with the experience and proven platform and solutions to ensure speed to market in a compliant manner, at scale.”
In addition, digital disease management creates important points of contact with payers, providers and particularly patients. Even frequent doctor visits cannot provide all the necessary support to help patients manage a chronic condition. With 24/7 connectivity, digital tools can enhance continuity of care, giving patients consistent guidance. In addition, physicians can receive real time data to track patients more closely, troubleshoot issues as they happen and potentially prevent hospitalizations.
“Sanofi believes that digital innovation can transform the discovery, development, and delivery of medicine. Digital is at the center of our work to enable better patient experiences, improve disease management and build deeper connections between patients and healthcare providers. The data collected through these efforts will also help power more personalized therapies, deliver beyond-the-pill service offerings, and potentially extend the patent life of our most valuable brands,” said Brad Gescheider, Global Head, Digital Innovation and Patient Services, Immunology at Sanofi. “We partnered with BrightInsight to build the next generation of digital disease management solutions that will enable us to impact every step of the patient journey.”
At the same time, SaMDs and other digital tools are becoming key differentiators in the marketplace. With an increasingly competitive environment and demanding reimbursement marketplace, companies are seeking out digital platforms that will give them a competitive advantage.
“This is how companies can personalize a treatment,” said Patel, “helping ensure the right patient gets the right therapy, as well as supporting their adherence and persistence, and helping them effectively control their conditions. Disease management is an incredibly promising use case for this technology – we’re seeing it in oncology, rare diseases, immunology, chronic care – across the board.”
A model for success
Digital tools have become especially valuable for people suffering from rare diseases, which can be especially difficult to manage. In some cases, medication regimens are quite rigid, making compliance essential. Digital platforms can help ease this burden, providing medication reminders, symptom management and secure communications with clinicians.
BrightInsight recently partnered with CSL Behring to create a digital app for adult patients taking Hizentra® for primary immune deficiency (PID) and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP). Patients taking Hizentra administer subcutaneous infusions multiple times a day, which can make compliance a challenge.
The app allows patients to closely track their infusions, receive timely reminders and share their medication journals with their physicians. So far, more than 3,000 patients have downloaded the Hizentra app, which represents a good cross section of Hizentra patients, and the app has an App Store rating of 4.5+ stars.
“Patients taking Hizentra have to do multiple self-injection infusions every day, and it’s critical that they accurately track the timing and locations of these infusions,” said Patel. “We built this solution with CSL Behring and it really helps reduce the burden of disease management for these patients. This is how we want to model these solutions. By helping companies better engage with their patients, we give everyone the information they need to improve health.”
Photo: imtmphoto, Getty Images
