Bayer Sweden is teaming up with a Swedish digital health startup focused on boosting patient compliance with an internet-connected pillbox. The collaboration also centers around a smartphone app that reminds patients to take their medicine on time.
The company, Pilloxa—born out of the Karolinska Institute, the Royal Institute of Technology and the Stockholm local government—says that patient noncompliance can dramatically increase strains on the healthcare system in terms of lives, time and costs.
The app also contains an up-to-date medicines list, a dashboard for the patient's medication history and motivational tools. Pilloxa hopes the collaboration with Bayer and its global commercialization network will expand its market reach and introduce more people to their smart pillbox.
"We see great potential in this innovation. For someone not too familiar with the subject it might seem like a trivial task to take one's medicine,” Ingalill Hyltander, commercial operations director at Bayer Scandinavia, said in a statement.
“The reality shows that poor adherence to medication is one of the biggest medicine-related issues that affects healthcare; many, especially chronically ill patients, could get better treatment,” Hyltander said. “We also see that the product can improve the quality of outcomes when following up with the patients.”
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Last July, Pilloxa raised 5.6 million Swedish krona, or just over $600,000 U.S., from a group of angel investors to help clinically validate the pillbox, with funds from Spotify global marketing veteran Sophia Bendz; former CEO of the Swedish venture capital firm Ratos, Susanna Campbell; Serendipity Group founder Saeid Esmaeilzadeh; and Eva Redhe, chairman of the board of Ftrack.