DAMAN P/S enters personal RA medicine project

Affecting more than three million patients in the EU and 17.6 million worldwide, Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) has a massive impact on patients’ quality of life with significant socio-economic implications. The SQUEEZE project will start early in 2023 with the ambition to create digital healthcare tools and biomarkers that allow the selection of the best existing treatment for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) for every indididual patient. Coordinated by the Medical University of Vienna, 13 leading university hospitals, research institutions and healthcare companies will work to overcome real-life challenges of RA drug therapy by addressing behavioural and psychosocial aspects such as non-adherence, psychosocial burdens, perceptions, comorbidities, dosage of medicine etc.

Currently more than 20% of RA patients achieve remission with first line treatment methotrexate. Less than half of the patients achieve at least low disease activity. Non-responders to methotrexate are escalated to expensive biologic (bDMARDs) and targeted synthetic DMARDs (tsDMARDs) treatments.  However, about 60% of patients show at least 20% improvement. As it is currently not possible to predict which of these DMARDs is the best choice for individual patients, the SQUEEZE Consortium will conduct a work program on biomarker use for better selection and optimisation of DMARD therapies, considering real-life limitations of drug therapy.

“Over the past decades promising new treatments for Rheumatoid Arthritis have been introduced," said Prof. Dr. Daniel Aletaha from the Medical University of Vienna who coordinates the project. "When successful, the SQUEEZE project will enable us to match patient and medical treatment in a significantly more precise manner moving from a trial-and-error treatment regime to a brand-new and patient-focused innovative care model for Rheumatoid Arthritis.”

Copenhagen-based DAMAN P/S, which develops patient-centric digital health solutions, will contribute with an AI-empowered app. "By the end of the project a digital therapeutic tool utilizing a recommendation engine for patients and healthcare professionals will be implemented,” says Andreas Dam, CEO at DAMAN. The company's work builds on an app termed HealthBuddy that helps RA patients to track and manage their symptoms by collecting physiological and biochemical data, and empower patients to learn more about their treatment options.