Japanese pharma firm Astellas made an upfront $15 million payment to the Maryland-based digital therapeutics (DTx) provider to codevelop and commercialize its BlueStar management tool for diabetes in Asia, according to MobiHealthNews. And the duo plans to architect novel digital therapies and get them into the hands of consumers worldwide.
Asia-based pharma incumbents are signaling their interest in entering the DTx market — and they’ll likely find success reaching a high volume of digital health-friendly stakeholders across the continent.
- We’ve seen a handful of Asian pharma firms partner with US-based DTx vendors recently. Japan-based drug maker Shionogi assumed development and sales endeavors for Akili Interactive’s digital treatments for neurological conditions in Japan and Taiwan; and Japan-based Otsuka forged alliances with Click Therapeutics to develop a digital therapeutic for major depressive disorder and Proteus Digital Health to craft a digital trackable pill.
- Here’s why we think this is a smart move: For one, these partnerships give pharmaceutical companies inroads to revenue pipelines beyond traditional drug sales. Secondly, DTx that work alongside pharma companies’ drugs — like Proteus’ tech that’s tacked onto Otsuka-developed pills — can drive value and sales of pharma’s existing drug portfolios. Further, Asia-based pharmas are well positioned to reach consumers with digital treatments considering docs in Asia are more likely to be implementing digital health tools and mobile health apps than healthcare pros elsewhere — which could translate into willingness to prescribe digital alternatives.
And establishing partnerships with legacy players abroad could help DTx firms build out their member bases — a hurdle many DTx firms are facing — alongside incumbents that are acutely familiar with new markets.
A roadblock holding many US-based DTx companies back from seeing meaningful growth is paltry enrollment: Even when firms strike deals with payers — DTx firms’ primary channel for reaching US consumers — their contracts often aren’t exclusive, meaning payers can be linked with DTx providers’ competitors and the underdogs could be overshadowed by their more established peers.
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Entering into new locations is a logical next step for growth, and handing over some operations to entrenched players who are privy to the ins and outs of those markets — like regulatory processes, which vary region to region — could be a way for DTx firms to quickly reach new consumers.
We expect the rate of deals like that of WellDoc and Astellas to remain on an upward trajectory, especially as the DTx space continues to crowd and has vendors looking for big-scale alliances to reach new blood.
Source: Business Insider