Roche UK and digital health technology company, Nye Health, have today announced a new partnership aiming to co-create digital solutions that learn, personalise and adapt to patients’ needs outside of a hospital or traditional clinical setting. Co-created with patients, we hope these tools will have the potential to identify new digital biomarkers and disease trajectories.
The immediate focus of the partnership will be on the development of digital tools to improve pharmacovigilance in a post-market authorisation context. By building on Nye’s patient-powered data capabilities, the partnership aims to combine the threads of digital information available from a person’s smartphone, wearable devices and electronic medical records into a single, clear and comprehensive picture of their health over time. This real-world data may then be used to speed up the detection of safety signals and potentially integrated into clinical workflows, which may lead to patients being identified earlier, pathways being optimised, and outcomes improved.
Dr Rebecca Pope, UK Digital & Data Science Innovation Lead, Roche UK, said: “This partnership represents the next step in Roche UK’s vision of using artificial intelligence to reduce the data gap which currently exists. Nye Health aims to give people a ‘digital driving seat’ in allowing them to control how they use their data to manage their health and to contribute to the advancement of the field for others, in a way that is protected and anonymised. Nye Health didn’t approach us with an idea for a specific app, they asked us about the greatest unmet needs for people in society today and suggested we work together to solve them. We collectively recognised that the need to build digital health tools in partnership with patients and the health system, in order to help people access the right care at the right time, has never been greater.”
Dr Alexander Finlayson, GP, CEO of Nye Health and Doll Fellow at Oxford University, said: “Digitisation and patient centricity are enablers, without which it has proven very difficult to operationalise the promise of personalised medicine. They represent a profound shift for an entire industry. Realisation of their potential to improve patient outcomes requires a marriage of worlds (digital, life sciences, healthcare, and anthropology) and deep interdisciplinary collaboration with an unusual mix of agility and planning, urgency and patience, long-term commitment, and global scale. Roche UK is at the forefront, and we are delighted to have partnered with them to lay the foundations for this transformation together.”
Over the last 20 years, most industries have seen the development and widespread use of digital tools combined with artificial intelligence to create products and services that are personalised to each individual, adapt according to the changing circumstances and which generate insights continuously and in near real-time. For example, electric vehicles can now transmit analytics to their manufacturers and regulators in real time and can be continuously upgraded in the real world.
In comparison, the pharmaceutical industry has remained relatively analogue. Until recently, it has not been possible for patients to access, let alone use tools powered by their medical records data. This constraint has created a natural ceiling for the depth of patient centred digital innovations.
Our partnership aims to change the tide. By combining Nye Health’s secure compliant platform and unique real world data capabilities with Roche UK’s deep expertise in the regulatory space and artificial intelligence, collectively we will enable patients to manage their own health journey. Together, we will provide timely and trusted information to patients and facilitate early identification of adverse events through digital innovation.
For more information, please visit www.roche.co.uk
