Company insight
From hospital to home: On-body devices are changing healthcare
As at-home care becomes an essential component of long-term healthcare, patients require technology that is safe and simple to use, and that makes compliance with treatment regimens much easier to manage. Greg Moakes, EVP business development at LTS Device Technologies, tells us how the latest on-body devices are making this a reality.
T
he healthcare industry is in the midst of a paradigm shift. On one hand, it faces great pressure to make patient care more personalised and more convenient, while on the other it is under pressure to find ways to cut costs. Part of the solution to this problem is to put patients in control of their treatment regimens and enable them to deliver drug therapies at home, but this path brings many challenges as well as opportunities. The push for at-home care requires devices that can administer a growing range of drugs safely and in line with strict treatment protocols, and many believe that on-body devices are the way forward. After all, the protocol for self-administered treatments has been fully proved with the management of diabetes.
Patients with diabetes increasingly wear continuous glucose monitors (CGM) on their skin and use pen injectors or autoinjectors to administer doses of insulin. On-body drug delivery devices can take the self-administration concept into the treatment of many more conditions. “Insulin and diabetes have normalised self- administration for more people, and it is a big trend that has taken down some walls,” says Greg Moakes, EVP business development at LTS Device Technologies. “Patients are comfortable with injecting themselves and wearing an on-body device, so we see it moving into treatment for patients who are neurologically compromised, and further into oncology and immunology-based illnesses like Crohn’s disease.” LTS has been a pioneer in on-body devices, and its Sorrel wearable drug delivery platform is a patient-friendly solution for complex drug delivery at home.
14 From diabetes to broader use cases: adopting at-home treatment regimens.
The company works closely with pharma companies to design innovative oral, transdermal and intradermal drug delivery systems, and Sorrel is its key solution for the subcutaneous delivery of large molecule drugs.
Volume and viscosity
Adopting at-home treatment regimens seems like a no-brainer, particularly at a time when hospital infusion clinics are over-utilised. The more patients can be treated at home, the more that resource is freed up for the
“Insulin and diabetes have normalised self- administration for more people, and it is a big trend that has taken down some walls.”
“Covid necessitated people spending less time in healthcare environments, so people became more comfortable with treatments delivered at home,” Moakes explains. “The trauma of a hospital visit is taken away, so drug companies have been differentiating themselves by reformulating from IV-based to subcutaneous at-home formulations.”
administration of drugs that are dangerous or have side effects. Also, people with more severe illnesses can be given more attention. Yet at-home care brings many challenges that on-body devices can address. Patient comfort is a critical factor in adherence to therapies, and the volume of a subcutaneous injection is directly linked to the level of discomfort. Traditional auto-injectors typically deliver up
www.worldpharmaceuticals.net
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85
