Recai Serdar Gemici, co-founder & CEO Albert Health,on the importance of personalised programmes for everyone
As populations become older through the world, chronic diseases are becoming more prevalent. Often they exist in tandem with other co-morbidities, creating a burden on healthcare systems. For Recai Serdar Gemici, co-founder & CEO Albert Health, a solution lies in leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create accessible and personalised chronic disease treatments for everyone that could decrease the long term complications potentially arising from their illnesses.
Albert is an evidence-based, multi-chronic disease management platform that has already touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people since its inception in 2018. The company Albert Health develops chronic disease management programmes and health management programmes in partnership with multinational pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, hospital groups, and healthcare professionals, and already has a global footprint.
The company has an in-house medical team and currently has 9 clinical trials underway, including MS, haemophilia and growth hormone deficiency with pharma companies Roche, Bayer, Sanofi and Pfizer. By helping individuals access the most appropriate treatment management for their disease, Albert Health offers proven clinical value and economic benefits to healthcare providers, payors and pharma companies.
Blending AI with science
The Albert Health team design disease-specific management programmes for patients operated by voice command. Available in English, Turkish and Arabic, there are more than 200,000 users for the multi-condition integrated pathways that include hypertension, oncology, obesity, heart failure, diabetes, asthma, MS and atrial fibrillation. The company is also working on an obesity programme incorporating tactics for behavioural changes including diet and exercise.
In most cases, patients’ disease journey, health data, parties involved in the treatment and monitoring are all scattered and disconnected. This inevitably leads to missed diagnosis opportunities, higher healthcare expenditures and more burden on the patient for managing their chronic diseases. The app enables patients to track and adhere to their medication, track their symptoms and treatment, store their medical documents and give them access to support materials. Telehealth and remote patient monitoring strengthen the relationship between patient and doctor, empowering the sufferer and giving them a sense of autonomy over their disease or diseases.
Albert integrates with common health devices such as blood pressure monitors, iOS and Android wearables and epipens, connecting easily to them. But much more than that, it collects and aggregates data, anonymising it for evidence generation that can be used in public health initiatives.
Clinical results show that 62.7 per cent of patients showed an improvement in their blood sugar, 57 per cent showed a decrease in their blood pressure, and 44 per cent had a progression to a lower stage in diabetes. “Diabetes is one of our priority focussed therapeutic areas. For healthcare providers, these improvements offer real value and evidence that prevention can be achieved with the right digital solutions,” says Recai.
The platform also offers a web panel for doctors to be able to remotely monitor their patients in parallel. “Doctors also benefit from our products, free of charge, because it’s funded by either the insurance or the pharmaceutical company,” he adds. The more doctors use our product and the more they recommend it to the patient, the more patients use it. But at the same time, the more patients adopt the mobile application alongside their treatment, the more engaged the doctors stay with the product as well.”
Expanding internationally
Many of the diseases managed by the platform resonate in countries in the Middle East that traditionally have high levels of diabetes and obesity. The MENA region has the second highest expected increase in people with diabetes, reaching 136m in 2045. In the UAE, 68 per cent of adults are overweight and 28 are obese.
In May 2023 Albert Health was accepted on to the TASMU accelerator programme in Qatar and were selected as one of the 8 finalists. In September 2023 the company opened offices in Dubai and they have also applied for a telehealth licence in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, emphasising their commitment to the region. They are also compliant in terms of data security.
“Preventative health is a key focus right now and we have prescribable and reimbursable digital health solutions that are attractive to payors and providers,” Recai says. “By decreasing long term complications our products deliver real value. We have had discussions with private hospitals in the area and if they already have an application, we can discuss an add-on API integrated chronic disease management module. And thanks to our modular structure and proven trained language model, we can go live in just two weeks.”
Pharma companies have expressed interest in the patient programmes and here Albert can be a patient companion app or be part of a patient support programme (PSP).
As a partner, providers and payors can create their own personalised health management programmes to meet their patients’ unique needs while generating real-world evidence. Building an app from scratch can be challenging but, as Recai says, partnering with a compliant, verified, and secure partner can help streamline the process.
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