February 11th, 2010

Reports Reuters:

Drugmakers are starting to get into bed with information technology companies as they struggle to prove the value of their medicines to governments and insurers.

By using smart gadgets to monitor patients in real time, pharmaceutical companies believe they can improve clinical outcomes and establish the cost-effectiveness of treatments.

The result, according to a report on Thursday from Ernst & Young, will be a host of new collaborations between pharmaceutical companies and businesses in non-traditional areas such as computing, telecoms and even retail.

A few such tie-ups are already happening.

Novartis, for example, signed a $24 million deal last month with U.S.-based Proteus Biomedical to create “smart pills” that can transmit data from inside the body to monitor patients’ vital signs and check they have taken medicines as prescribed.

Bayer is connecting its glucometer for diabetic children to Nintendo’s video-gaming consoles to promote consistent blood sugar testing.

And Johnson & Johnson’s Lifescan unit has an iPhone application that lets users upload readings from their connected blood glucose monitors to their Apple phone.

“We will see multiple types of collaborations in future,” Patrick Flochel, Ernst & Young life sciences leader for Europe, Middle East, India and Africa, told Reuters.

“This movement will be driven by a focus on outcomes, which pharma companies are more and more having to commit themselves to.”

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