03
de Juny
de
2016
Act.
03
de Juny
de
2016
Whoever has been diagnosed with hay fever knows perfectly well that there are certain months of the year when handkerchiefs, pills and sprays are their best friends. However, those who have suffered more serious reactions, known as anaphylaxis, have no choice but to always carry the only treatment that can save their lives: an adrenaline auto-injector.
However, this prepared medicine is often left at home, has run out or has been damaged due to the temperature outside. It is a problem that the Catalan startup Adan Medical Innovation wishes to resolve with the creation ofAnapphylaxis, an application and sheath for an auto-injector that alerts the patient when they do not have it with them or when it has to be changed.
At the head of the project are the doctors of Medicine and Science, Anna Sala and Adrià Curran, specialists in Allergology and Internal Medicine respectively, who have shown that a business can also be started from Vall d'Hebron and without giving up being a doctor, as entrepreneur Xavier Verdaguer explained on Wednesday in a meeting at Bizbarcelona. The project was developed with a team made up of another three founding partners working part time. The idea was born in 2013 and developed at the Imagine Creativity Center, where the two founders were proclaimed winners of the edition.
So far, the company has managed to get the support of the serial entrepreneur Xavier Verdaguer and the expert doctor in biotechnology in the United States, Joaquim Trias, as investors.
Making patients' lives easier
"Anapphylaxis is a smart sheath where the adrenaline goes and connects to a mobile by Bluetooth. It is like making the auto-injector intelligent," sasy Sala about their gadget. Once linked to the telephone, the sheath can also alert the contacts that the user has previouslyset when he or she suffers an allergic reaction, warn the emergency services and even open a video explaining how the dose of adrenaline should be administered. Moreover, it is customisable: "The colour can be changed and personalised to remove the stigma of carrying an auto-injector."
The app can be downloaded for free, as it has other more generic functions, such as identifying chemists and medical centres nearby, but the device has still not come on the market because it is still in a test phase with patients at the Vall d'Hebron hospital who have been diagnosed with anaphylaxis. "They download the application, answer some surveys and test it for a time,"says the specialist, "many of the deaths from anaphylaxis are among very young people, and that is what we want to avoid, so that people feel safe and know how to administer it themselves."
The cofounder forecasts that the launch could take place at the beginning of 2017, once the tests are over and after closing a third investment round. They expect to raise 1.5 million euros for distribution, a figure that can be added to the more than 500,000 euros they have already raised. Nor do they rule out the process being shorter or a change of strategy: "We are in negotiations with laboratories. If something interesting turns up, it could turn things around, as we won't have to do the distribution ourselves."
The startup took its first step with the founders' own capital, seed capital and with contributions from families, fools and friends, as well as the odd patient. The later arrival of venture capital and the second investment round allowed them to get the patent, the prototypes and to make sure that it complied with the regulations. In respect to that, Sala stresses that they have approval from the Agencia Española de Medicamentos, with whom they began the clinical trials "to make any necessary and regulatory modification according to what the patients who are testing it said." "That is how we want to distinguish ourselves from the other medical gadgets, monitoring it to ensure its efficiency," he adds.
A legal gap between the app and the medicine
In the company's development process they had to incorporate professionals from different branches. "As doctors we know pathology well, but we needed a multi-disciplinary team in which each person took charge of a different thing," he says, and so they looked for a CEO, experts in patents, regulation and the creation of software and hardware, among others.
The main obstacle they found is the legal gap that Sala insists there is in the regulation: "There are very few people who are making smart medical devices. A pacemaker, for example, is not that. There is a gap because it is not really clear what type of regulation you have to pass and that makes it hard to get on the market." Despite everything, the proposal has been well-received, which can be seen by the interest from the investment fund, Catalunya Emprèn, the Fòrum eHealth de Catalunya –which they took part in- and the recent invitation to participate in a medical device conference in the United States. "We have the perception and feedback that we are doing well, but it is complicated because we are somewhere between the medicine and the app," he adds.
Sala points out that in a matter of a few years all the knowledge related to the development of medical devices and patents has evolved a lot. "When we began, the research conditions were very different and it seemed that you were speaking another language. Medical devices and patents were a very conflictive issue and it was difficult to be sure on which step to take," he says.
He now praises the leap ahead made by hospitals and research centres in including support programmes for innovation and the creation of companies: "They are now doing it everywhere and encouraging it because they have seen that the people who detect the problems are doctors, but they do not know how to develop the tools." Until now, apps and tools were designed by engineers, but always following their own technical logic, at a distance from the everyday experience of experts in medicine. "Business centres are now bringing these two parts together as well as people with business knowledge," says Sala.
The medicine of the future
One of the main questions around the arrival of devices like Anapphylaxis is about cost. Sala thinks that ideal thing would be "co-funding" and he argues this with the fact that it is coming on to the market "to help monitor the illness." "The sheath needs significant investment and cannot be free," he says to argue his position: "In these cases it would be good for the health system to change and include these tools in the same way as it prescribes medicines, because it is still a good thing for health." He also recognises that adapting the health system to new changes takes time and society is some way from being able to receive prescriptions from medical devices. Nevertheless, it is positive and he believes that, with pressure from the community, "in the end it will have to take the step."
Yet this is only a small part of the whole revolution that the sector has to undergo in the next few years. In fact, Sala says that in a maximum period of five years will be when we notice the change in "the way doctors act and treat patients."
Despite being a revolution that will affect the system in general, the cofounder of the startup names two areas: surgery and medicine. In the case of the first, he mentions the use of robots, which will be able to "be programmed so that they carry out the perfect surgery, perhaps better than humans;" while in the second, he thinks that it will be the relationship between doctor and patient in which the digitalisation will be noted, and that "will speed up diagnosis, treatment, monitoring... and it will all mean that the user will be better and more autonomous."
The proliferation of apps that help to monitor diet, state of health or physical activity, among others, is another element to keep in mind. Sala thinks that the avalanche of options for the patient is positive but he calls for more attention for the applications developed in research centres and hospitals, by experts, than those that are purely for leisure. And he strikes a note of warning: "The human part, the relationship, must not be lost. For all that there be the Internet and tools, we have to know how to manage them and make a good diagnosis in order to use them correctly".
However, this prepared medicine is often left at home, has run out or has been damaged due to the temperature outside. It is a problem that the Catalan startup Adan Medical Innovation wishes to resolve with the creation ofAnapphylaxis, an application and sheath for an auto-injector that alerts the patient when they do not have it with them or when it has to be changed.
At the head of the project are the doctors of Medicine and Science, Anna Sala and Adrià Curran, specialists in Allergology and Internal Medicine respectively, who have shown that a business can also be started from Vall d'Hebron and without giving up being a doctor, as entrepreneur Xavier Verdaguer explained on Wednesday in a meeting at Bizbarcelona. The project was developed with a team made up of another three founding partners working part time. The idea was born in 2013 and developed at the Imagine Creativity Center, where the two founders were proclaimed winners of the edition.
 |
| Adrià Curran and Anna Sala at the Congrés Catalunya Emprèn. Ceded |
So far, the company has managed to get the support of the serial entrepreneur Xavier Verdaguer and the expert doctor in biotechnology in the United States, Joaquim Trias, as investors.
Making patients' lives easier
"Anapphylaxis is a smart sheath where the adrenaline goes and connects to a mobile by Bluetooth. It is like making the auto-injector intelligent," sasy Sala about their gadget. Once linked to the telephone, the sheath can also alert the contacts that the user has previouslyset when he or she suffers an allergic reaction, warn the emergency services and even open a video explaining how the dose of adrenaline should be administered. Moreover, it is customisable: "The colour can be changed and personalised to remove the stigma of carrying an auto-injector."
The app can be downloaded for free, as it has other more generic functions, such as identifying chemists and medical centres nearby, but the device has still not come on the market because it is still in a test phase with patients at the Vall d'Hebron hospital who have been diagnosed with anaphylaxis. "They download the application, answer some surveys and test it for a time,"says the specialist, "many of the deaths from anaphylaxis are among very young people, and that is what we want to avoid, so that people feel safe and know how to administer it themselves."
The cofounder forecasts that the launch could take place at the beginning of 2017, once the tests are over and after closing a third investment round. They expect to raise 1.5 million euros for distribution, a figure that can be added to the more than 500,000 euros they have already raised. Nor do they rule out the process being shorter or a change of strategy: "We are in negotiations with laboratories. If something interesting turns up, it could turn things around, as we won't have to do the distribution ourselves."
The startup took its first step with the founders' own capital, seed capital and with contributions from families, fools and friends, as well as the odd patient. The later arrival of venture capital and the second investment round allowed them to get the patent, the prototypes and to make sure that it complied with the regulations. In respect to that, Sala stresses that they have approval from the Agencia Española de Medicamentos, with whom they began the clinical trials "to make any necessary and regulatory modification according to what the patients who are testing it said." "That is how we want to distinguish ourselves from the other medical gadgets, monitoring it to ensure its efficiency," he adds.
A legal gap between the app and the medicine
In the company's development process they had to incorporate professionals from different branches. "As doctors we know pathology well, but we needed a multi-disciplinary team in which each person took charge of a different thing," he says, and so they looked for a CEO, experts in patents, regulation and the creation of software and hardware, among others.
 |
| The sheath connects with the patient's mobile via Bluetooth. Ceded |
The main obstacle they found is the legal gap that Sala insists there is in the regulation: "There are very few people who are making smart medical devices. A pacemaker, for example, is not that. There is a gap because it is not really clear what type of regulation you have to pass and that makes it hard to get on the market." Despite everything, the proposal has been well-received, which can be seen by the interest from the investment fund, Catalunya Emprèn, the Fòrum eHealth de Catalunya –which they took part in- and the recent invitation to participate in a medical device conference in the United States. "We have the perception and feedback that we are doing well, but it is complicated because we are somewhere between the medicine and the app," he adds.
Sala points out that in a matter of a few years all the knowledge related to the development of medical devices and patents has evolved a lot. "When we began, the research conditions were very different and it seemed that you were speaking another language. Medical devices and patents were a very conflictive issue and it was difficult to be sure on which step to take," he says.
He now praises the leap ahead made by hospitals and research centres in including support programmes for innovation and the creation of companies: "They are now doing it everywhere and encouraging it because they have seen that the people who detect the problems are doctors, but they do not know how to develop the tools." Until now, apps and tools were designed by engineers, but always following their own technical logic, at a distance from the everyday experience of experts in medicine. "Business centres are now bringing these two parts together as well as people with business knowledge," says Sala.
The medicine of the future
One of the main questions around the arrival of devices like Anapphylaxis is about cost. Sala thinks that ideal thing would be "co-funding" and he argues this with the fact that it is coming on to the market "to help monitor the illness." "The sheath needs significant investment and cannot be free," he says to argue his position: "In these cases it would be good for the health system to change and include these tools in the same way as it prescribes medicines, because it is still a good thing for health." He also recognises that adapting the health system to new changes takes time and society is some way from being able to receive prescriptions from medical devices. Nevertheless, it is positive and he believes that, with pressure from the community, "in the end it will have to take the step."
Yet this is only a small part of the whole revolution that the sector has to undergo in the next few years. In fact, Sala says that in a maximum period of five years will be when we notice the change in "the way doctors act and treat patients."
Despite being a revolution that will affect the system in general, the cofounder of the startup names two areas: surgery and medicine. In the case of the first, he mentions the use of robots, which will be able to "be programmed so that they carry out the perfect surgery, perhaps better than humans;" while in the second, he thinks that it will be the relationship between doctor and patient in which the digitalisation will be noted, and that "will speed up diagnosis, treatment, monitoring... and it will all mean that the user will be better and more autonomous."
The proliferation of apps that help to monitor diet, state of health or physical activity, among others, is another element to keep in mind. Sala thinks that the avalanche of options for the patient is positive but he calls for more attention for the applications developed in research centres and hospitals, by experts, than those that are purely for leisure. And he strikes a note of warning: "The human part, the relationship, must not be lost. For all that there be the Internet and tools, we have to know how to manage them and make a good diagnosis in order to use them correctly".