Marcus Bates
Vice President of Digital Healthcare Business Development, Aptar Pharma
Chronic respiratory diseases present a huge burden on society but advancing technology can help patients to better manage their condition with the help of their healthcare professionals.
Chronic respiratory diseases (CRD) such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) impact over half a billion people globally, with COPD alone accounting for 3.2 million deaths worldwide in 2019. In the UK, the total annual cost of managing respiratory conditions is £11 billion, of which almost £5 billion relates to COPD and asthma.
Driven by harmful environmental, occupational and behavioural exposures, these numbers will continue to increase if measures to improve respiratory health are not implemented. In parallel, giving patients and care teams tools to better control disease and disease progression is paramount to reducing the CRD impact on quality of life, and improving clinical and medico-economic outcomes.
In the UK, the total annual cost of managing respiratory conditions is £11 billion, of which almost £5 billion relates to COPD and asthma.
Despite the availability of inexpensive inhaled therapeutics for CRD, poor disease control is currently commonplace, notably for asthma.
With this in mind, Aptar Pharma has launched HeroTracker® Sense, a novel smart device that transforms a standard metered dose inhaler into a smart connected healthcare device. The device provides feedback to help patients use medications as intended by prescribing healthcare providers (HCPs). By supporting inhalation technique and adherence, it can improve disease control and patient outcomes.
Empowering patients
HeroTracker® Sense is a patient-centric product that aligns trusted inhalers with modern lifestyles. It utilises sensors to support the coordination of inspiration with actuation, and to monitor flow rate and inhalation duration. The BreatheSmart® mobile app stores this data and also features date and time stamps to indicate when the patient should take their medication, environmental monitoring alerts on temperature and humidity issues.
Facilitate care delivery
This kind of technology is an innovation with parallel potential to reduce the burden that CRD imposes on HCPs and nurse practitioners. By providing valuable analytics, the device delivers insights into patient training, onboarding and performance. Teams can also better understand real-life situations and use and adapt treatment plans accordingly.
Build the future of care
Via systematic acquisitions and partnerships, the company is now working towards solutions for end-to-end integrated healthcare that efficiently combine therapies, drug delivery devices and digital services.
As summarised by Marcus Bates, Vice President of Digital Healthcare Business Development at Aptar Pharma: “Our ultimate goal is to leverage digital solutions to give patients more control over their disease and to cost-efficiently improve health outcomes.”
