Pfizer and Alex Therapeutics collaborate on quit-smoking app for the German market
Stockholm-based Alex Therapeutics combines the latest psychological insights from cognitive behavioral, acceptance and commitment therapy with the power of artificial intelligence. The Swedish company has developed an AI-powered platform for for digital therapies (DTx) to provide stand-alone solutions for patient treatment: The AlexDTx Platform. Pfizer is supporting the approval and market launch in Germany as well as marketing and sales.
The Digital Health Care Act and DiGAs
Digital health applications (DiGAs) are designed to help detect, monitor or treat diseases as part of a digital therapy. With the introduction of the Digital Health Care Act, patients have been given access to these new digital therapies: Approved DiGAs can now be prescribed, and the costs are borne by the statutory health insurance. This gives providers of health apps access to a market of 73 million people with statutory health insurance in Germany.
Alex Therapeutics serves this market with its platform for digital therapies, which is already being used worldwide. The company was founded in 2017 by John Drakenberg Renander, an entrepreneur with degrees in psychology and business, and Oliver Fleetwood, PhD in theoretical computational molecular biophysics. The fact that the strengths of Pfizer and the young company complement each other ideally was already evident in a collaboration with Healthcare Hub Sweden. At the beginning of 2022, the partnership became official: the digital smoking cessation app is soon to accompany patients in quitting smoking on the German market as well. Pfizer supports the young company in all key challenges on the way to approval and market launch in Germany.
Ready for the German market
With the support of experienced Pfizer experts, the team from Healthcare Hub Berlin is working with Alex Therapeutics to prepare the platform for the German market: by providing advice on the requirements relevant to approval, by translating the content, and also by further developing the application and the platform with experienced experts.
Marketing and sales support
Other points where Pfizer will support Alex Therapeutics in the future are marketing and sales. The advantages of digital therapies, which are still little established, must be clearly communicated to physicians. This is where Pfizer brings in its network of medical associations and doctors. Through these contacts, but also with the help of direct patient marketing, Pfizer wants to ensure that the AlexDTx Platform is well received and can support numerous patients in quitting smoking.
The collaboration with Pfizer Germany allows us to pool our knowledge with one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. At the same time, the partnership gives us access to a new, attractive healthcare market.
The support of Pfizer's network of experts will enable Alex Therapeutics to quickly penetrate the German market and gain access to Pfizer's global network. For the young Alex Therapeutics team, however, it also means that they can concentrate on their core competence: The development of new health applications that enable patients to live healthier lives.
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