Propeller Health has partnered up with Aptar Pharma, which last year generated $800 million selling drug dispensation devices such as inhalers and injectors to drug companies. Aptar and Propeller Health will digitally connect these devices to Propeller’s software via sensors, helping patients to better manage respiratory diseases, opioid addiction and pain.
As part of the partnership, Aptar has invested $10 million in the funding round, bringing Propeller Health’s total funding to over $65 million. The move also positions Propeller Health for growth into other areas, as it has focused solely on chronic respiratory diseases until now.
“[It’s] a great opportunity to industrialize connectivity,” said co-founder and CEO of Propeller, David Van Sickle.
Propeller Health is one of a handful of companies developing app-based digital therapeutics, a field which has emerged in the past decade as a way to help patients manage medication regimens and symptoms—and get individualized feedback and coaching along the way. The company has also published results of its two clinical trials in numerous peer-reviewed publications showing that the use of its platform has both improved adherence to medication regimens while at the same time reducing reliance on “rescue inhalers” that reduce symptoms but have other “detrimental long term effects.”
“We’ve already seen that these digital medicines can deliver meaningful results,” said Salim Haffar, president of Aptar Pharma. “While promising evidence is accumulating, for us to truly understand the benefits, we’ll need to scale this to even larger populations.”
For more information about the new partnership between Aptar Pharma and Propeller Health, read this feature in Forbes.