Established by the PHA Association, Pulmonary Hypertension Awareness Month is now in its 30th year and encourages those who are connected to the condition to help spread awareness.
Co-founder and VP of Partnerships Prayat Shah explains how Wellthy is working with the PH community and how our technology is improving the lives of those living with the condition, in the long-term.
Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a rare and complex chronic disease. It does not discriminate either: it affects people of all ages (including children), races and ethnic backgrounds – but it is more commonly found in women, non-Hispanic black people and people aged 75 and older.Due to its rare nature, there is often a delay to diagnosis as its symptoms, which include shortness of breath, dizziness, fatigue, chest pain, heart palpitations or edema (swelling), are frequently mistaken for other conditions, such as asthma., In other cases, a symptom or complication will become so severe that an individual may require hospitalization, where after many tests, they finally receive a PH diagnosis.
Although there is no cure for PH, today’s treatments can reduce symptoms and help individuals manage and minimize the impact on their quality of life. As with any condition, the quicker it can be diagnosed, the quicker the patient can start treatment and delay the progression, improving their long-term prognosis.
A huge factor in increasing diagnosis rates is raising awareness of PH, and that’s what Pulmonary Hypertension Awareness Month every November is all about.
Self-management is an important part of life with PH. At Wellthy Therapeutics we work with life sciences partners to support patients to best manage their lifestyle in an easy and convenient way. Although we don’t work directly to diagnose PH patients, through our life sciences collaborations, we hope to make their life journey easier and more manageable as they adjust to living with this long-term condition.
Our expertise lies in developing award-winning smartphone-based lifestyle management programmes for people with chronic conditions. We began by creating a prescription grade platform for type 2 diabetes patients and following its success, we partnered with new life sciences companies to look at how we can support patients living with other chronic conditions.
In early 2020 we worked with a life sciences partner in Europe to develop their first-ever open innovation program, creating a Class-I CE marked digital solution to support patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). The digital therapeutic enhances patients’ autonomy in the management of this condition, provides structured training and gives access to health coaches. The digital solution obtained the approval of the ethical committee for the conduct of a Post-Market Clinical Follow-up (PMCF) study that involves multiple sites in Spain and will measure the clinical outcomes on the quality of life of patients with PAH.
What began as a tool, limited to academia and technology research, has now shifted into a full-fledged, viable treatment option that can be prescribed to patients alongside medication. Our Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) can help improve health outcomes on the ground.
We plan to keep growing to support individuals affected by PH and other long-term conditions, to lead healthy and full lives, minimizing the day-to-day-impact on their quality of life.
If you’d like to know more about how we’re partnering with life science companies to co-create and commercially scale SaMDs we’d love to hear from you: contact Malvika , the AVP – Strategy and Business development at Wellthy Therapeutics and focuses on driving commercial success by developing strategic partnerships with key stakeholders like pharmaceutical organizations, biotech companies in Europe and Asia to lead the development and commercialization of digital health solutions through outcome-focused business models.
malvika.sharma@wellthy.care
