Wellington
An Auckland-based global company, that in August was the target of New Zealand's largest singleventure capital investment, has picked up an international award.
Atlantis Healthcare has unique programmes thathelp patients stick to their courses of treatment, where particularly for chronic diseases such asdiabetes, asthma and obesity, non-adherence is a burgeoning cost to the health system all over theworld.
The company received a $20 million capital injection from London-based White Cloud Capital for a50% share of the private company, in order to globally expand more than 50 programmes in sevencountries.
It took top honours for digital innovation at the
ThisWayUp is built around an interactive website and associated support helpline, and judgessingled out its use of SMS and email to ensure ongoing interaction with patients as "particularlyinteresting and clearly effective."
Atlantis Healthcare specifically targets, and is the market leader, in patient-tailoredprogrammes to tackle non-adherence to their prescribed treatments. In the U.S. healthcare systemalone, non-adherence is estimated to cost US$290m a year.
"As a GP writes a prescription, they assume their patient is going to be adherent," says Atlantischief executive, Michael Whittaker. "Yet we know for a fact, 20% of patients don't even go to thepharmacy to pick up the prescription in the first place. We know that 50-60% of chronic diabetes,asthma and obesity patients don't carry on those medications as they should after six months."
Atlantis has developed strong, evidence-based programmes with proven effectiveness in ensuringprescription adherence he says.
Atlantis spent, and still spends, much of its research on health psychology and early on securedthe exclusive services of Prof. Keith Petrie of the University of Auckland who pioneered predictivemodels of patients’ non-adherence. Prof. John Weinman of the University of London, another leadingacademic in this field was also brought on-board.
“They’ve helped provide the basis of our whole clinical approach,” Whittaker says.“We’ve built a whole enterprise over the top by taking academic thinking and research and goingout to the real world with interventions that work.
The British prize follows a second year in a row top prize for Excellence in Patient Support atthe Australian Pharmaceutical Research, Innovation and Marketing Excellence Awards for its LookingForward programme.
White Cloud's $20m investment, based on common venture capital rate ofreturn metrics, could see a future company value in three to four years of $100m.