Biofourmis recently acquired Gaido Health from Takeda Digital Ventures, building on its oncology portfolio, to improve the care experience for cancer patients and providers.
Gaido Health—a Los Angeles-area based digital therapeutics company focused on the oncology market—was part of Takeda Digital Ventures, Takeda’s corporate technology investment and incubation arm. Its recent acquisition by Biofourmis in a strategic deal expands the digital therapeutic company’s portfolio into the oncology market.
The acquisition seeks to address a disconnected oncology care pathway that has led to more than 30 percent of patients on chemotherapy being readmitted to the hospital or requiring a visit to the emergency department. In the United States alone, 1.6 million patients are diagnosed with cancer each year, and the total cost of care is expected to rise to US$170 billion in 2020.
“Biofourmis’ digital therapeutics solution for oncology—now bolstered with this acquisition of Gaido Health—is based on an innovative approach that continuously monitors patients’ physiology biomarkers and symptoms, detects early signs of complications, and arms care teams with tools to intervene early to prevent medical crises, improve outcomes and lower costs,” said Kuldeep Singh Rajput, CEO of Biofourmis. “The platform also empowers patients with cancer to self-manage symptoms using Biofourmis’ artificial intelligence [AI]-based Biovitals® treatment algorithms, which improves engagement and quality of life.”
Gaido Health’s solution, which will be supported by Biofourmis’ existing Biovitals® platform, combines information on vital signs collected via remote monitoring in the home, patient surveys and analytics to detect early signs of complications in patients with cancer who have been recently discharged from the hospital. Gaido Health’s AI-based algorithms detect signs of complications to inform the clinician, enabling earlier interventions.
“The first question we always ask ourselves at Takeda is, ‘How can we do more for patients?’—and Gaido Health does the same,” said Bruce Meadows, Head of Investments at Takeda Digital Ventures. “Gaido was founded in 2018 to create new tools that assist caregivers in monitoring patients undergoing chemotherapy, and we are very proud of what Gaido has achieved. Biofourmis will continue this vital work.”
Mr Rajput shared that with Gaido Health’s focus on oncology it will complement Biofourmis’ existing digital therapeutics portfolio, which includes the therapeutic areas such as heart failure, chronic pain and other cardiometabolic diseases.
“In addition to this strategic acquisition creating synergies for better remote monitoring of patients discharged from the hospital after cancer treatment, it will also mean better tools to manage patients who have a related diagnosis of cancer therapy-induced cardiotoxicity leading to heart failure, which is a dreaded complication,” Rajput explained.
Gaido Health’s CEO Gary Manning will be joining Biofourmis as senior vice president of corporate development. He said that the two companies’ complementary digital therapeutics solutions created an exciting opportunity to join forces. Prior to the acquisition, Gaido Health was already using Biofourmis’ Everion® wearable biosensor for home monitoring.
The Gaido Health platform also will be combined with Biofourmis’ Biovitals® platform to manage toxicities in patients undergoing CAR T-Cell Therapy, a form of immunotherapy that uses specially altered T cells—a part of the immune system—to fight cancer.
“I am delighted that we can continue the tremendous work that has been done by Gaido Health to provide an enhanced level of safety to the recently discharged oncology patient,” Manning said.
“Biofourmis’ acquisition of Gaido Health will expand the population of remotely monitored patients and using their tremendous technology will move our capabilities from detection of deterioration to prediction and enable earlier interventions using software-based therapeutics.” [APBN]