FINLAND – Kaiku Health, a digital cancer care firm, has entered into a strategic partnership with pharma and diagnostics giant Roche to provide Kaiku’s instruments for symptom administration and help to clinics and patients.
Finnish-born Kaiku provides a digital platform where patients can enter their symptoms as they undergo cancer therapy, receive recommendations for lower-acuity issues, and keep the care team informed so that they can intervene and provide help when needed.
The companies stated that their long-term goal is to develop and provide additional digital health instruments “via a multi-partner ecosystem,” as well as advocate for reimbursement for monitoring and management platforms.
Kaiku CEO and cofounder Lauri Sippola said in a statement, “Kaiku Health and Roche share a commitment to make personalized healthcare available for more patients through digital solutions.
“Together we have already developed therapy and product-specific modules in cancer immunotherapy and other targeted therapies.”
This is not Kaiku’s first pharmaceutical collaboration. A few years ago, the company partnered with Novartis to monitor and manage melanoma, a type of skin cancer.
Prior to being acquired by Swedish oncology firm Elekta in 2020, the company collaborated with Amgen to supply digital symptom tracking for multiple myeloma, a type of bone marrow most cancers.
Roche is promoting the collaboration as a way to improve care and outcomes for cancer patients.
Digital solutions are becoming increasingly important for delivering quality care to patients, and this partnership is a significant step toward delivering digital patient monitoring and management solutions that may help improve outcomes such as symptom burden and quality of life for individuals receiving systemic therapy for cancer.
Partnerships between digital health and pharmaceutical companies are not uncommon.
MedRhythms, a prescription digital therapeutics startup, announced a licensing agreement with Biogen last week to develop and commercialize its MR-004 product, which is intended to treat gait deficits in people with multiple sclerosis.
Alex Therapeutics, a Swedish startup, announced a strategic commercial partnership with Pfizer in January to develop digital therapeutics for nicotine addiction.
Alex, which recently raised €3.5 million (US$3.65 million), provides a platform designed to assist pharma and life science partners in developing and launching digital therapeutics.
Jasper Health, which announced a US$25 million Series A raise in February, is another company in the digital cancer care and prevention space.
Reimagine Care, which focuses on in-home care, also recently received US$25 million in funding. CancerIQ, which aims to predict a patient’s cancer risk, announced a US$14 million Series B round in March.
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