Netmedi, a Finnish-based health technology company, has launched a pioneering digital platform called Kaiku Health IO for the follow-up of patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors. The company presented its Kaiku Health IO Early Access Program at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago.
Kaiku Health IO has already garnered the interest of several leading oncology clinics and will soon be in a multicenter clinical validation phase. The digital platform offers a solution for improved clinical management of immune-related adverse events, helping patients and clinicians during treatment and follow-up.
Kaiku Health IO monitors patients’ clinical status in real-time and gathers information about the impact of the immunotherapy treatment, enabling the clinical team to treat patients more efficiently in a tailored and individualized manner, and to actively react if there are any alarming signals during the treatment and recovery period.
Immune checkpoints are molecules expressed on the surface of immune cells that either amplify an immune signal (co-stimulatory molecules) or lessen its strength. Many cancers protect themselves from the immune system by inhibiting T-cell functions through these molecules. Immune checkpoint inhibitors are drugs, often antibodies, that overcome this inhibition and unleash an immune system attack on cancer cells, increasingly considered as new targets for cancer immunotherapies.
“Cancer immunotherapy has the potential to significantly extend the lives of many cancer patients, which underlines the importance of systematic patient follow-up,” Prof. Paolo A. Ascierto, director of the National Tumor Institute Fondazione G. Pascale in Naples, Italy, said in a recent news release. “In addition, the adverse event profile of immunotherapy differs from conventional oncological treatments. These events can be better managed if they are detected and treated early on. Immunotherapy sets new requirements for patient follow-up.”
Kaiku Health IO was developed in collaboration with several Finnish and European oncology specialists. “Netmedi is committed to supporting the treatment of cancer patients by developing easy-to-use, intelligent digital services for patient-centric follow-up,” said Netmedi CEO Lauri Sippola.
The center, led by Ascierto, is a leading immunotherapy institute and has an extensive knowledge in treating patients with immune checkpoint inhibitors.
