The pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca is seeking to improve the treatment of respiratory diseases together with the Basel-based startup docdok.health. Founded in 2017, the company focuses on commercializing software as medical device (SaMD) products for digital therapeutics. It is active across the German-speaking DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) region as well as in Israel.

According to a press release, both companies are striving to develop a digital solution that monitors the asthmatic status of sufferers in real time, recognizes potentially critical situations and immediately sends an alert to the medical staff treating the patient. To achieve this, an app combines feedback from the patients with automatically collected real data, which shows, for example, the air quality in their surroundings.

Using a digital solution, the aim is to expand the basis for assessing the state of health of sick people. As the press release explains, at present this is only based on patient reports on the day that they visit the doctor. This could lead to unsuitable medical measures and improper use of inhalers.

Personalized therapies could help to massively improve the quality of life of more than 550 million people around the world affected by such conditions in addition to relieving the strain on healthcare systems, according to Ohad Goldberg, Country President of AstraZeneca Israel, in the press release. “The ambition of this collaboration is to change the future of the treatment of chronic respiratory diseases”, he states.

The partnership will initially involve a clinical study at Israel’s largest hospital, Sheba Hospital in Tel Aviv, before an observational study at University Hospital Zurich follows. The first phase of the study is set to be concluded by the end of September.