Adherium announces first US disease management collaboration in COPD with HGE Health

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Melbourne, Australia – 16 April 2020: Adherium Limited (ASX:ADR), a leader in digital inhaled device adherence, remote monitoring and data management solutions, has agreed a US disease management collaboration with Pennsylvania-based HGE Health. Both parties will rapidly evaluate and integrate Adherium’s sensor and software technology into HGE Health’s established telemedicine platform to better assess, manage and treat high risk respiratory patients.

HGE Health’s digital platform and technology-enabled services, called HGE Care, allows pulmonary and primary care physicians to remotely care for patients from anywhere in the US, and help patients better understand and manage changes in their COPD symptoms. HGE Health is a market leader and the only full-service remote patient management solution in the COPD space.

“This collaboration is the first step in the execution of our revised commercial strategy and helps confirm our position in the growing digital and remote patient monitoring market. It also demonstrates our ability to scale the business by delivering technology solutions that drive efficiencies and improved outcomes. Our Hailie™ solution offers a unique patient and provider friendly solution to support remote monitoring of respiratory patients and is highly complementary to the offering established by HGE Health. We have ambitious plans with HGE Health to support extending our combined offering across the US in the future” said Mike Motion, Chief Operating Officer, Adherium.

The collaboration will focus initially on the COPD patient group with an immediate target of those particularly at risk from COVID-19. HGE Care is contracted by payers and providers primarily in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Arizona, for the management of over 100,000 COPD patients, with near term expansion planned into Florida, Texas, Illinois, New Mexico and Montana. Following this initial evaluation Adherium and HGE Health expect to expand the offering to new and existing customers for remote asthma management.

HGE Health’s platform delivers improved patient management and resource utilization through individual patient support and follow up. App based patient-entered data is used to enable carer and provider reimbursement using CPT codes. HGE Health derives its revenue from contracts on both a per capita basis and on a resource usage risk-share basis.

“The symptoms of patients enrolled on our digital platform may become more severe not because their current medical condition has worsened, but because they have failed to take their medications as prescribed,” explained Michael J. Markus, PhD, CEO of HGE Health.

“Our clinically-validated algorithms may recommend prescribing a higher dose of a recovery medication, but the higher dose may be unnecessary if the patient complies with the original prescription. Knowing whether patients are in compliance with their prescriptions will also allow the effectiveness of different medications to be evaluated on a patient by patient basis. This new ability to monitor and consider medication adherence is appealing to our existing customers and partners.”

Respircare in Tulsa, Oklahoma will be one of the first in the US to use the Hailie™ sensor with HGE Health technology. Dr Mark Boomer, MD, CEO of Respircare said, “this new capability is already expanding Respircare’s relationships with local payors and native American tribes for COPD and asthma management in Oklahoma.”

Based on the initial progress in COPD the plan is to then extend the combined business offering to manage high risk asthmatic patients within current and future contracts. Adherium’s future offering will also be expanded with the updating and extension of Hailie™ sensors to include key physiological measurements such as peak flow. HGE Health’s current contracts are primarily with payers and providers on the east of the US.

Based on the initial pilot and planned scale up Adherium is not expecting material revenue impact in 2020 but anticipates significant commercial impact thereafter with COPD patients potentially benefitting from the expanded HGE Health product offering.

Adherium’s Hailie™ medication adherence technology and data management platform is an easy to use digital patient medication monitoring system to help patients and health care professionals track medication adherence and reveal insights into their medication usage. There is extensive real world and clinical trial evidence supporting improved disease management, clinical outcomes and resource utilization when the Adherium platform is used.

The Bluetooth® wireless technology-enabled Hailie™ medication sensors clip onto patients’ existing inhalers and automatically send usage data to their smartphone and Hailie™ cloud. The Hailie™ technology is 510K cleared in the US and CE marked approved in the EU.

About Adherium (ASX: ADR): Adherium is a provider of digital health solutions and a global leader in connected respiratory medical devices, with more than 170,000 sold globally. The company develops, manufactures and supplies a broad range of connected medical devices for respiratory medications for patients, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers and contract research organisations. Adherium’s Hailie™ solution is designed to help patients achieve better adherence and provide visibility to parents and caregivers. It does this by tracking medication use and reminding the user with helpful nudges when it’s time to take doses, and by providing access to usage history to better understand patterns in their asthma and COPD. These tools ultimately enable people who live with asthma or COPD to more easily manage their condition alongside their physician. Learn more at adherium.com.

About HGE Health
Headquartered in Fort Washington, PA, HGE Health harnesses its deep experience in chronic disease management and digital health in pulmonary disease, telemedicine and mobile health to develop a clinical services platform that delivers better care faster at a much lower cost for patients, physicians and payors. Built on clinical protocols developed and supported by 16 years of research, developed by world renowned pulmonologist Dr Gerard Criner at Temple University company’s technology has compiled the longest running and world’s largest longitudinal data set of COPD symptoms, interventions and clinical management to help physicians provide care for a geographically and socio-economically diverse COPD and pulmonary patient population.

The release of this announcement was authorised by the Adherium Board of Directors.
Enquiries: Rudi Michelson Mike Motion
Monsoon Communications Adherium
+61 3 9620 3333 +44 7917 688801
+61 (0)411 402 737
rudim@monsoon.com.au investors@adherium.com