Biofourmis Named 2021 DPHARM Idol Disrupt Winner

BOSTON, Oct. 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Biofourmis, a Boston-based global leader in digital therapeutics and virtual care that powers personalized predictive care, has been named the winner of the 2021 DPHARM Idol Disrupt event. The award recognizes disruptive innovations to advance clinical research by reducing the burden to patients and investigators, streamlining processes, and ultimately delivering therapeutics to patients faster.

The 11^th annual event, which took place September 13-14 in Boston, was judged by a panel of nine thought leaders from the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries. Competing companies gave five-minute presentations, which included an in-depth Q&A session. Presenting for Biofourmis was Chief Operating Officer Jaydev Thakkar, who before joining the company spent 14 years at Amgen. Thakkar's presentation is available here.

Judges lauded Biofourmis' rapid growth and the ability of its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Biovitals® platform to remotely collect and analyze clinical biomarkers of trial participants. They said they were also impressed by Thakkar's answers provided to the judges' questions regarding access and equity to bridge the digital divide.

"I've watched countless digital innovations hit the market that, unfortunately, seem to add more burden to the patient than relief," said judge Jen Horonjeff, PhD, founder and CEO of Savvy Cooperative. "I am encouraged by Biofourmis' approach to make the process as seamless as possible for patients, which in turn can both reduce anxiety associated with managing new technology during a trial and increase access to patients who otherwise may not participate."

Biofourmis was one of six companies selected to present at 2021 DPHARM Idol Disrupt.

"Biofourmis is honored that the 2021 DPHARM Idol Disrupt judges—comprising clinical operations leaders from leading pharma, patient advocates and clinicians—recognized that we are disrupting the status quo when it comes to companion and digital therapeutics," Thakkar said. "The rigorous evaluation criteria measured our solution's patient centricity, scalability, the 'wow' factor, how 'real' the innovation is, and the ability to solve a large problem—all of which we are proud to say have improved outcomes and saved costs for our pharma partners, clinicians and participants."

Thakkar's presentation described how Biofourmis disrupts clinical research, including in-person and remote participant monitoring. Biovitals' capabilities extend far beyond a simple companion app for study participants, Thakkar explained. Rather, Biovitals is a regulated, modular digital health platform that includes technologies that have been reviewed and cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for clinician-led patient care activities. The Biovitals Analytics Engine received 510(k) clearance from the FDA in 2019 as a medical device for ambulatory physiological monitoring.

The Analytics Engine uses data continuously collected from medical-grade biosensors (more than 20 physiology parameters) to create a personalized baseline for each trial participant that can start recognizing patterns within hours. The AI within the Analytics Engine can detect if short-term biomarker fluctuations are non-actionable, such as a patient sitting up or going upstairs, or if it is a clinically significant pattern that needs medical attention.

Each subject's baseline is continually refined by machine learning and the platform's predictive analytics notify investigators of any early warning signs of clinical deterioration to drive earlier interventions that can prevent adverse outcomes. The technology is ideal for the drug development process because any potential adverse events can be flagged and addressed early on, protecting patient safety and saving significant investment costs.

The Analytics Engine particularly impressed the 2021 DPHARM Idol Disrupt judges.

"What's so magical is that the Biovitals Analytics Engine matches up all the disparate data so that you can see it on the same timeline and interpret it more accurately," said judge Esther Dyson, founder of Wellville.

Developing Innovative Therapies
Using heart failure as an example, Thakkar explained in his presentation that Biovitals is disruptive to clinical research because it has various applications across multiple disease states and patient conditions.

For example, only about 25% of heart failure patients are on guideline-directed medical therapy for heart failure, and only 1% are receiving optimal therapy. Biofourmis' technology can help clinicians align more patients with optimal therapy more quickly, which enables a more expedited analysis of a drug's efficacy. In fact, Biofourmis recently received a Breakthrough Designation from FDA for its BiovitalsHF® prescription digital therapeutic, which fills a huge unmet medical need for effectively treating heart failure (6 million people nationwide) by helping clinicians get their patients on optimal drug therapy.

Since the Biovitals technology platform is modular, it can be easily customized for research focused on various diseases and conditions—in addition to heart failure, Biofourmis has worked with pharma clients on chronic and acute pain, COPD, cancer, and others.

"We are thrilled to see that that the DPHARM Idol Disrupt judges recognized that our end-to-end AI-based predictive analytics technology can provide high value in various clinical trial designs, whether researchers are studying hard outcomes or quality of life," said Kuldeep Singh Rajput, CEO and founder of Biofourmis. "One of the strengths of Biovitals is the platform's ability to support decentralized and hybrid clinical trials while also offering novel digital therapeutics and virtual care solutions for multiple disease states."

About Biofourmis
Biofourmis—a fast-growing global leader in digital therapeutics and virtual care that powers personalized predictive care—discovers, develops and delivers clinically validated software-based therapeutics to provide better outcomes for patients, advanced tools for clinicians to deliver personalized care, technology to demonstrate the value of and complement pharmacotherapy, and cost-effective solutions for payers. Biofourmis has built Biovitals®, a highly sophisticated personalized AI-powered health analytics platform that predicts clinical exacerbation in advance of a critical event, which is the backbone of their digital therapeutics product pipeline across multiple therapeutic areas—including heart failure, oncology, infectious disease (i.e., COVID-19), chronic pain, acute coronary syndrome and COPD. For more information, visit: www.biofourmis.com.

Media Contact:
Tara Stultz
Amendola Communications for Biofourmis
440.225.9595
[email protected]

SOURCE Biofourmis