Helsinki-based health data science company Kaiku Health, which offers digital patient monitoring and patient-reported outcome services, has announced that is teaming up with Amgen to roll out digital symptom tracking for multiple myeloma, a type of bone marrow cancer.

In collaboration with Turku University Hospital’s hematology unit in Finland, Kaiku Health developed in 2017 an adaptive algorithm to track nine of the most common symptoms that occur during treatment, as reported by patients, such as numbness, pain and fatigue.

“There, we identified an unmet need to support patients with multiple myeloma diagnosis, because there are a lot of different symptoms related to the disease or the treatment and it’s really important to accurately monitor those as well as intervene when needed,” Lauri Sippola, CEO and co-founder of Kaiku Health, told MobiHealthNews.

“We have now built a specific module to support patients, so basically it’s a digital health intervention to support and help them throughout the treatment, and at the same time, on the other hand, supporting care teams and their workflow and effectiveness at the clinic. We’re now also working together with Amgen to roll out and implement this tool and make it broader available to patients in Finland.”

According to the company, results from a study carried out at Turku University Hospital - where 18 people were invited to use the Kaiku Health web application and five activated the symptom tracking module - indicated that patients felt the digital health intervention was “very useful” and “stayed engaged”. It was recommended at the time that a larger trial be carried out to further assess its impact on clinical outcomes.

“Kaiku Health automates the symptom follow-up through its AI powered patient-friendly digital application that interviews the patient along the care journey, gives relevant information automatically to the patient based on his or her status and notifies the care team if alerting symptom scores are detected. In addition, Kaiku Health integrates with its Bridge interfacing engine to other hospital information systems which enables automated data flow," Sippola added.

“We truly believe that personalised digital health interventions can support patients’ wellbeing and improve their quality of life. We are at the moment operating in leading hospitals in Europe, like Turku, and in the coming months we are expecting new results to come from some of our ongoing clinical studies, for instance in the area of cancer immunotherapy."

Niilo Färkkilä, Country Director of Finland at Amgen, told MobiHealthNews that while the module is currently only in use at Turku University Hospital, it will soon be rolled out at Oulu University Hospital and in other clinics in Finland and abroad.

“In Finland, pioneering is part of our mentality and hospitals are open to improving their current processes by applying new technologies. This makes Finland an excellent testbed for novel solutions like Kaiku Health,” Färkkilä added in a statement.