Milan, 15 February 2021. PatchAi and Roche Italia aim together for the digital transformation of the Italian healthcare system with an innovative solution for patients affected by oncological diseases.

PatchAi, the Italian digital health startup that aims to improve clinical research through a focus on patient engagement, and Roche Italia, a major player in the pharmaceutical industry, announce the agreement about the PatchAi for Smart Health Companion (SHC hereinafter) platform for oncology patients, already available from July 2020.

With this dedicated Patient Support Programs (PSPs) solution, PatchAi also enters the area of standard care pathways. SHC is a modular platform used to deliver the Roche Patient Support Program called “Smart Health Companion” and currently it is available in Italy for patients with haemato-oncological conditions.

PatchAi for Smart Health Companion embeds a virtual assistant to engage patients in improving self-management of their health conditions, tracking and sharing daily diaries, managing therapy intake/adherence and generating valuable Real World Evidence via Co-PRO® (Conversational Reported Outcomes). Insights are collected and analyzed to improve patients’ experience, clinicians’ workflows and support care delivery.

The project represents a massive step in driving the digital transformation of Healthcare in Italy, paving the way in facilitating health system sustainability and optimizing healthcare delivery by ensuring patient engagement at every step. During the Covid-19 pandemic, global health systems have been heavily affected on a large scale, causing significant impediments to standard care pathways. For instance, the AIOM (Italian Association of Medical Oncology) reported a -30% drop in first visits for diagnosis and a -36% drop in physical visits during the Italian pandemic. With the adoption of SHC, healthcare professionals can count on a reliable digital telemedicine solution to assist their patients in real time through video consultations, to collect Patient Reported Outcomes and other valuable health data.

Preliminary data on patients enrolled in Clinical Research using PatchAi® platform shows a protocol adherence up to 95%, significantly higher than other digital solutions in the market today and up to 9 times higher than paper-based ones. This result highlights the demonstrated ability to support patients and clinical teams via a modular solution.

“We met PatchAi in 2019 at the Roche HealthBuilders Open Innovation program. Together with many public and private partners in the health ecosystem, we envisioned a solution enabling significant improvements in oncology and hematology care pathways. Our efforts led to SHC, the first digital health solution registered as a Medical Device and fully personalised for oncology and haematology patients in Italy. The evidence collected show the capacity to consolidate more experiential and clinical value for the patient with a positive contribution to the healthcare system sustainability. These are very important results that we are proud of. As a stakeholder of the health system, we will make SHC available to all our public and private customers”, says Elia Ganzi, Integrated Customer Management Director at Roche Italia.

“We are proud to have realized this project, working at the forefront and doing now what patients need next within the digital health space too. With this major achievement, we will work towards playing an active role in redefining and revolutionizing patient engagement within digital healthcare. To enable the transformation of the current health systems, we will be helping medical teams in rapidly and efficiently supporting patients and translate “patient centricity” into programs that demonstrate their reliability and effectiveness from a health-economic perspective based on data driven results”, affirms Alessandro Monterosso, PatchAi CEO and Co-Founder. “This large-scale project recognizes our efforts and our commitment to innovation and value-based outcomes. At PatchAi we strive to stay ahead of the curve by further investing in R&D, data-science, and scaling our solution on an international level”, he adds.