GluCare.Health, a leading health tech startup, has partnered with global pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, market leader in Diabetes & Obesity, to introduce a blueprint for the future of healthcare. 

 

The partnership will see a 150-patient weight management pilot programme challenge the way traditional care providers view and manage chronic conditions like obesity, said a statement. 

 

The model of care for the pilot programme will combine new digital bio-markers alongside existing therapeutics. Utilising wearable and connected technologies, it will offer an unparalleled level of in-patient and data-driven remote care. 

 

It is expected that this model will enhance the levels of care, and eventually treatment outcomes, in comparison to traditional models of care. This innovative partnership will put accountability for outcomes vs costs on the provider, rather than on the insurers or patients, it said.  

 

The partnership will be the region’s first value-based reimbursement model, and will be the first relationship of its kind for Novo Nordisk globally. 

 

The six-month programme, which begins in September, is open to people with obesity - those with a BMI of 30 or above - as well as individuals with a BMI of 27 or above who also have at least one weight-related comorbidity. Once enrolled in the programme, patients will be under the care of GluCare’s multidisciplinary clinical team, which consists of a health coach, a nutritionist, a nurse/patient educator, and an endocrinologist, with the care team additionally monitoring patients virtually. 

 

In this model where disease management is augmented by technology, patients will be provided wearable technology, including IoT (Internet of Things) devices for continuous data monitoring. Data, or digital biomarkers, collected from these wearable and connected tools will be available immediately to the patient on GluCare.Health’s mobile app. The clinical team will also have access to all the data collected through an intelligent analytic platform, which provides the care team with actionable insights. 

 

Participants will be continuously monitored by GluCare.Health clinical team for compliance and progress between the three compulsory in-person visits that are required by the participant to complete the program. Those enrolled in the programme can also reach their physicians and coaches with queries and concerns directly through the GluCare.Health app, ensuring that their care is hyper-personalised.

 

“GluCare.Health and Novo Nordisk are so confident in the success of this model of care that if patients do not lose at least 10% of their body weight by the end of the six-month program, GluCare.Health and Novo Nordisk will cover all or a portion of the cost as part of the value-based reimbursement pilot. GluCare.Health is committed to transparency when it comes to reporting results of the programme,” it said. 

 

According to Novo Nordisk’s Vice President and General Manager, UAE, Mads Bo Larsen, the pilot programme addresses the complex nature of obesity in a way that has never been done before anywhere in the world.

 

GluCare.Health’s Co-Founder and Chairman, Ali Hashemi said that the partnership and the pay-for-performance model is a vote of confidence for GluCare.Health’s comprehensive, hyper-individualized model of care, as well as a challenge to other care providers. 

 

With one in three adults affected by obesity in the UAE, GluCare.Health’s Co-Founder and Managing Director, Dr Ihsan AlMarzooqi added that beyond the potentially devastating human cost, this blueprint for care has the potential to save the UAE economy and businesses billions of dollars in costs and lost productivity.   –TradeArabia News Service