Kaiku Health to improve cancer care through partnership with global medicines company
HELSINKI – Kaiku Health, an Elekta (EKTA-B.ST) company and a leading digital therapeutics platform for cancer care, and Novartis, a prominent global medicines company, announce the expansion of their partnership. This follows on the success of their collaboration, announced last year, in developing digital patient monitoring and management for melanoma patients.
“Our goal is to make precision medicine available for the growing number of cancer patients,” says Henri Virtanen, Deputy General Manager and Cofounder of Kaiku Health. “The cooperation has shown that together we can enhance the monitoring and symptom management of melanoma (skin cancer) patients. We are committed and excited to continue this work, as well as to broaden our joint efforts across other cancer types and treatments globally.”
In the first phase of the collaboration, Kaiku Health and Novartis developed a therapy-specific module for patients receiving anti-cancer medicines* produced by Novartis for forms of melanoma. The goal was to generate novel insights on patient outcomes in a real-world setting and to develop more advanced machine-learning-based algorithms, such as symptom prediction, for personalizing the symptom management of patients receiving the Novartis medicines, and other combination therapies.
The project started at cancer clinics in Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy using the specific module for Novartis medicines alongside an established module from Kaiku.
“The next phase of our partnership includes taking machine learning algorithms further. Machine-learning-based symptom prediction is a great way to bring precision medicine to more patients. We are excited to enhance the existing machine-learning model in melanoma and applying it to new models for other indications and treatments,” Virtanen continues.
The cooperation has already expanded, with additional cancer clinics starting to use the melanoma Tafinlar and Mekinist-specific module.
*TAFINLAR® (dabrafenib) and MEKINIST® (trametinib) are registered trademarks of Novartis AG
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For further information, please contact:
Mattias Thorsson, Vice President, Head of Corporate Communications
Tel: +46 70 865 8012, e-mail: [email protected]
Time zone: CET: Central European Time
Raven Canzeri, Global Director, Media Relations
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About Kaiku Health
Kaiku Health is a digital health intervention platform classified as a Medical Device in cancer care. Its algorithms screen symptoms, notify care teams and provide personalized support for patients. Kaiku Health has modules for over 25 cancer types across different cancer care pathways. Since 2020 Kaiku Health has been a part of Elekta.
About Elekta
As a leader in precision radiation therapy, Elekta is committed to ensuring every patient has access to the best cancer care possible. We openly collaborate with customers to advance sustainable, outcome-driven and cost-efficient solutions to meet evolving patient needs, improve lives and bring hope to everyone dealing with cancer. To us, it's personal, and our global team of 4,700 employees combine passion, science, and imagination to profoundly change cancer care. We don’t just build technology, we build hope. Elekta is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, with offices in more than 40 countries and listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. For more information, visit elekta.com or follow @Elekta on Twitter.