Chiesi joins with Aptar on digital platform for respiratory patients

Hard on the heels of the official launch of its digital disease management platform, Aptar Pharma has secured a partnership with Italian drugmaker Chiesi to deploy it in support of patients.

The alliance – the first to be announced since Apar's digital health unit unveiled the platform earlier this month – will focus on patients with respiratory diseases, including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and will focus initially on the European market, although it may be expanded elsewhere in future.

The toolkit is intended to help people with asthma and COPD understand and take control of their disease, hopefully encouraging adherence to medications so as to make sure treatment is as effective as possible, and also provide data to clinicians that can help them deliver care to patients more effectively.

It will combine the pharmacological and behavioural aspects of managing respiratory diseases, according to the partners, such as "adherence monitoring, lung function assessment, reporting symptoms, identifying disease triggers, and communication with care teams and health coaches."

Digitalisation of health is one of Chiesi's core R&D objectives, and the alliance with Aptar isn't its first in the respiratory category, its largest therapeutic area accounting for €1.7 billion of its total revenues of €2.4 billion last year.

The pharma company has also been collaborating with Kaia Health to commercialise their digital therapy for COPD – which aims to improve the lives of COPD patients by digitising elements of pulmonary rehabilitation - in select markets in Europe.

Chiesi has said it wants to take an outcomes-driven approach to digital health, providing interventions that make a difference to patients beyond simply encouraging prescription uptake of medications.

To that end, it also provides funding to the EFA DIG-IT project, a survey of 1,000 patients in five European countries, which seeks to understand the digital needs, perceptions, and use of digital tools by asthma and COPD patients.

According to Aptar and Chiesi, respiratory illnesses represent an enormous burden on healthcare systems in Europe, with an annual cost of around €40 billion.

"This collaboration leads the way for our recently launched disease management platform offering and reinforces our conviction that end-to-end solutions designed to improve patient care are the future of healthcare," said Sai Shankar, president of Aptar Digital Health, in a statement.