A new partnership between smartpatient Gmbh and Spoonful of Sugar, a University College London business company, initially brings the validated MARS-5 adherence measurement tool to the MyTherapy app. The partnership will also provide access to other proprietary, behaviourally intelligent adherence, non-persistence, and medicines-related behavioural tools, frameworks, and interventions to smartpatient’s MyTherapy app, the world’s fastest-growing digital medication management and patient support platform.

The deployment of the internationally recognised and scientifically validated MARS adherence measurement scale in real-world settings provides immediate value for the millions of MyTherapy app users and paves the way for large-scale, real-world adherence interventions to be deployed and researched for the benefit of patients, industry partners from pharma, biotech, and the wider healthcare community.

The World Health Organization, estimates that 50% of medications are not taken as prescribed, resulting in premature deaths, sub-optimal health outcomes, and avoidable healthcare expenditure, so the scale of the problem is huge. While significant research has been carried out on the behaviours associated with this, putting the findings into interventions at scale in real-world settings has, to date, proven to be a challenge.

smartpatient’s MyTherapy medication management and patient support platform, is relied upon by companies such as Novartis, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca for delivering digital companions that help patients safely and effectively manage their treatment. MyTherapy and the tailored digital companions that run on it are used by millions of patients around the world, demonstrating significant levels of user engagement.

Spoonful of Sugar works with partners in the healthcare and pharma sectors to understand the drivers for medicines related behaviours that negatively impact outcomes and then develop and implement interventions that support optimised patient health. The company applies decades of academic research conducted by its founder, Professor Rob Horne, who is a foremost expert in the field. His research has informed a number of scientifically validated tools, frameworks, and interventions that are deployed globally to support millions of patients get the most from their medicines and vaccinations across a wide range of therapy areas.

“This partnership means that the digital MARS-5 and other validated and scientifically proven behavioural tools and interventions, developed by SoS, can be used on a broad scale, generating data and insights that will immediately benefit patients and partners. This real-world data, combined with the ability to test adherence-supporting interventions in real-time on MyTherapy is an exciting opportunity for advancing knowledge in the field and providing partners with even deeper insights through a combination of the application of scientific and real- word behaviour change evidence”, says Professor Horne.

“Addressing medication adherence and non-persistence is a top priority for innovative pharma companies,” says Sebastian Gaede, founder and CEO of smartpatient. “Through this new partnership, we are no longer just relying on studies for showing MyTherapy’s impact but can offer our partners the ability to generate real-world evidence on adherence and benchmark their products using MARS-5. This is not just ‘nice-to-know’, measuring adherence is the pre-requisite for iterating on a support offering and evaluating the impact of any changes. Together with Spoonful of Sugar, we can now offer pharma an integrated approach for developing, implementing, and evaluating behaviour change interventions in a real-world setting, fully grounded in science.”

About smartpatient
smartpatient helps patients achieve better health outcomes using MyTherapy, a leading medication and disease management app with more than 10 million users, globally. For industry partners from healthcare and pharma, MyTherapy is the Operating System for Digital Therapeutics (DTx), patient education and adherence support. By deploying their patient-facing services via MyTherapy, they benefit from MyTherapy’s world-class engagement, scalability and regulatory compliance. Beyond providing the platform, smartpatient support partners by co-creating patient services using behaviour change methodology and providing unique real-world adherence and patient journey insights via its global patient panel. Being ISO 13485 and ISO 27001-certified, we have the capability to develop, and operate modules as certified medical devices under MDR (EU), FDA (US) and beyond.
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About Spoonful of Sugar
Spoonful of Sugar is a University College, London Business Company, founded in 2011 by world-renowned Professor of Behavioural Medicine, Rob Horne. Spoonful of Sugar applies evidence-based research on the phycology of medicines related behaviours to help understand and then deliver interventions that help patients, healthcare professionals and partners in the healthcare and biopharmaceutical sectors to get the most from effective medicines, by enhancing adherence to medicines and guidelines, preventing non-persistence and optimising health and economic outcomes. Their proven behavioural science tools, frameworks and interventions are based on 25 years of world-leading research. This research has informed national and international guidelines, policies, and reports regarding adherence, including the NICE Medicines Adherence Guidelines, a WHO adherence report and various guidelines.

Press Contact
For more information, please contact Dan Brown at: brown@smartpatient.eu