This Company Is On A Mission To To Become A Global Leader In Digital Therapeutics For Oncology

ForbesWomen This Company Is On A Mission To To Become A Global Leader In Digital Therapeutics For Oncology Marija Butkovic Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I write about health tech, women’s health and female entrepreneurship. New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Aug 22, 2022, 11:55am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin In females in the U. K. , there were more than 182,000 new cancer cases every year between 2016 and .

. . [+] 2018 getty The latest statistics show that, in Europe, there were about four million new cancer cases in 2020.

According to the EU Science Hub , in the global context, “Europeans are disproportionately affected by cancer – while Europeans make up only one-tenth of the world population, about 25% of all annual cancer cases occur in Europe”. In the U. K.

it’s approximately 375,000 new cancer cases, which means that every two minutes someone will be diagnosed with cancer. Research also suggests that 1 in 2 people in the U. K.

will be diagnosed with cancer over their lifetime. In females in the U. K.

, there were more than 182,000 new cancer cases every year between 2016 and 2018. These are all enormous numbers and due to scarce resources, the challenges that these patients face are unmet. Delays in cancer screening and waits for further diagnostic tests and treatment is affecting around 2.

4 million people, the disruption to cancer services caused by the pandemic also included and still includes huge decreases in patients being urgently referred to hospitals with suspected symptoms, and let’s not forget significant delays to treatment, which will cause additional stress and anxiety to all the patients. Supporting Female Cancer Patients First And this is where Prosoma – a medical company creating digital therapeutics products for cancer patients comes into place. Its multidisciplinary team of innovators reinventing healthcare and finding new solutions that improve existing and emerging challenges at the intersection of mental health, digital therapy and oncology, created Prosoma’s first app – Living Well, to support the mental health of female cancer patients.

Emanuela Kufel, cofounder of Prosoma Prosoma MORE FOR YOU Spring Health Notches A $190 Million Series C At A $2 Billion Valuation, Making CEO April Koh The Youngest Woman To Run A Unicorn A Year After Unleashing War Crimes Against Indigenous Armenians, Azerbaijan’s Threats And Violations Continue The Secret To Being The Wildly Popular Mayor Of Miami? Surround Yourself With Amazing Latina Women “We know that the diagnosis is extremely stressful and has a tendency of disrupting every area of life for patients. This is particularly true for women who, as we know, often have additional responsibilities. It is key to support these patients as they go through their treatment to ensure that they have support, a greater level of comfort, and a better chance to follow pharmacological treatment.

It is also really important to provide a solution, considering that the waiting times for talking therapies in the U. K. can reach 6-9 months,” shares Emanuela Kufel, cofounder of Prosoma, with me.

What makes Living Well unique? Living Well is the only comprehensive program that has a real toolbox that will lead the patient from the moment of diagnosis towards regaining control over their wellbeing. It’s a 3-month course aiming to ensure that cancer-related anxiety and depression can be managed and that the patients can start shifting their focus toward building new healthy habits. App also aims to limit the time that the patient unnecessarily spends in the hospital, whether it is to address anxiety issues or require additional care due to poor treatment adherence.

This way the local resources will be better used. “Our app is not just a measurement tool or a subscription service – it’s methodical and has a beginning and an endpoint,” explains Kufel. The application contains over four hours of interactive content, it can be a great source of information for the clinical team or a fantastic self-help tool in times when patients often might feel helpless.

The app has also been developed specifically for women, as Prosoma’s team understand that their needs are different. Living Well is the only comprehensive program that has a real toolbox that will lead the patient . .

. [+] from the moment of diagnosis towards regaining control over their wellbeing Prosoma “Through the app, we aim to make sure that they feel supported. Women are often caregivers and can be very unselfish even when facing a serious illness.

This app is here to help them take care of themselves and to ensure they have a guide (in a form of an avatar) who can take care of them,” adds Kufel. At the moment, app’s users are adult cancer patients and cancer survivors – at the moment Kufel and her team are starting with an app specifically for women, but the version for male patients is coming very soon. The mental health needs of both sexes are very different, something Prosoma’s team realized very early on their journey, so they’re working on tailored solutions to make sure the best outcomes for everyone.

Mental Health Care Should Not Be A Luxury Globally, people with cancer have trouble accessing appropriate psychological support, a new global report has found. Seven out of ten respondents (69%) said they needed psychological support either during or after their cancer care, but a third (34%) of those who needed it said it was not available. “We truly believe that mental health should be integrated into universal healthcare services and should be reimbursed.

No one would be asking a patient in the U. K. to pay for their surgery or a broken leg.

Mental health should be treated as equal and allowed the same provisions and funding. This is what we’re directly tackling with our app. Providing a real scalable solution that can fill the gap when no care is available.

” The pandemic really highlighted both the fragility of our collective mental health and the lack of services that can address that. Imagine getting a major life-changing diagnosis on top of that. Unfortunately, there isn’t currently a single healthcare system that can address this problem and the state on mental health can have a real impact on the other parts of the patients’ treatment journey.

Kufel highlights that, as a former NHS worker, she has seen a significant shortage of required skilled personnel (e. g. psycho-oncologists) who are available to help these patients, and there isn’t a real nationwide standard of care beyond the NICE recommendations.

Patients also often face financial, geographical and psychological barriers to accessing care. On top of that access to services can really vary between locations. Sometimes it might be a charity, sometimes a multidisciplinary team, sometimes a support group.

“The simple truth is that there isn’t enough funding in the system to enable consistency across the board and universal access. At this stage, only a digital therapeutics solution can truly be scalable in mental health. ” The Living Well app contains over four hours of interactive content, it can be a great source of .

. . [+] information for the clinical team or a fantastic self-help tool in times when patients often might feel helpless Prosoma Plans For The Future Kufel admits, however, that their main customers in the future will be hospitals, clinics, private clinicians, pharma, or insurers.

The company is currently running randomized controlled trials in Germany, the U. S. , and Poland to establish the impact of its app on patients’ quality of life.

The results of these trials will be available towards the end of 2022. So far, the free access to the app has been provided to over 400 patients and these numbers are growing every day. One of the most exciting ventures that Prosoma has recently secured is a partnership with Daiichi Sankyo – a global pharmaceutical company and the second-largest pharmaceutical company in Japan, where Kufer and her team will be working on a pilot alongside the implementation of the company’s groundbreaking breast-cancer drug Enhertu, which “.

. in previously treated patients, cut the risk of disease progression or death by 50% and the risk of death by 36% compared with chemo”, according to data from the phase 3 DESTINY-Breast04 study presented at the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting. In a small subgroup of TNBC patients, Enhertu cut the risk of disease progression or death by 54% .

“We’re also starting our journey in the U. K. , which is very exciting due to my background in the NHS and NIHR.

I am very keen to ensure that patients are given support locally, as I have seen first-hand the burden on the system and the lack of resources, and most importantly the suffering of patients without support,” adds Kufel. So far, the company has received funding for the pre-seed and seed stages from both the EU funding and venture capital investors in the amount of approximately $2. 5 million, and has recently closed a new round of convertible notes for $3 million as well, which is a worthy milestones in the current fundraising climate and shows investors believe in digital healthcare and female-led as well as female-focused companies.

The company is currently preparing to raise its Series A round towards the end of the year. “In the future, we aim to cater to all behavioral needs of cancer patients to ensure they have the best chance of managing cancer-related depression, anxiety, diet, and symptoms. We want this care to become universal for all patients everywhere.

We’re also working on several reimbursement pathways across our core markets – it will be interesting to shape some of these options with regulators and healthcare systems alike. I really believe that apps available on prescription will be a reality in most European countries in the next five years,” concludes Kufel. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn .

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