Proteus Digital Health Expanding Number of Diseases Treated

Proteus Digital Health (Proteus), one of the leaders in the field of Digital Medicine, is working with leading health systems and pharmaceutical companies to bring this new digital solution to healthcare providers, thereby increasing access to better insight, optimized therapies and lower costs.

Proteus Discover is the world’s first Digital Medicine offering designed for health organizations searching for an efficient, patient-centric approach to measure, manage and improve the health of patient populations. Proteus Discover provides the tools needed to build efficiency and measurement into the delivery of care, and an opportunity to mitigate the high costs of uncontrolled diseases.

Proteus’ solution is to have patients swallow a sensor with their medication. The sensor, an ingestible event marker, or IEM, along with a wearable sensor patch, tracks how the patient and the pill are responding. That sensor and patch record when the pill was taken and how the patient’s body responds, as measured by their heart rate, respiration, body angle, temperature, and more.

The  data is transmitted to a phone or a website, and can be sent directly to care­givers, who can adjust the dosage or change the medication, provide coaching, or respond to changes in the patient that demand immediate attention. Proteus’s IEMs are being tested among patients suffering from cancer, infectious diseases, or mental health disorders.

Since debuting the first medication made with the technology — a form of the depression and schizophrenia drug Abilify — in 2017, the company has put its hardware into 40 different medications ranging from drugs for infectious disease and mental illness to diabetes.

Most recently, according to new data from an independent study published in PLoS Medicine, Proteus’ ingestible pill and sensor system could improve medication adherence, and subsequently treatment, for patients with tuberculosis (TB). The trial found Proteus’ system to accurately determine whether or not a medication was taken. Patients using the system at home were more likely to keep up with their doses, and across the board preferred the system to gold-standard adherence programs requiring medication to be confirmed by an in-person provider.

Also this year, Proteus announced the launch of the first program using its technology in oncology. As part of the initiative, seven patients with advanced colorectal cancer are now taking a sensor-embedded version of the common chemotherapy drug capecitabine in place of their regular medicine. The company hopes to enroll as many as 750 patients across the country in the program — which is taking place in partnership with the nonprofit Minneapolis-based health system Fairview Health Services and the University of Minnesota — within the next two years.

Otsuka and Proteus, in 2018, combined Otsuka’s ABILIFY^® (aripiprazole) with the FDA-cleared Proteus^® ingestible sensor, embedding the sensor in single tablets at point of manufacture. The FDA granted its first approval of a Digital Medicine, ABILIFY MYCITE^® (aripiprazole tablets with sensor), on November 13, 2017. ABILIFY MYCITE^® is a drug -device combination product of Otsuka’s aripiprazole, an atypical antipsychotic, embedded with Proteus’ ingestible sensor that communicates with Proteus’ wearable sensor patch, and a smartphone application. The product measures ingestion of ABILIFY MYCITE^® and patient activity, rest and mood.