Pear Therapeutics has entered into agreements with multiple technology companies, including Empatica, etectRx, and KeyWise. The new technologies complement the voice-based biomarkers previously licensed from Winterlight Labs. These new agreements bolster Pear’s Prescription Digital Therapeutics (PDT) platform, by adding to its library of digital biomarkers, machine learning algorithms, sensor-based technologies, and digital therapeutics.
Why does it matter?
Pear has built the first scalable platform infrastructure to discover, develop, and deliver PDTs to patients. Pear’s continued investment in cutting-edge technologies supports its strategy to create a potent toolkit for the development of PDTs.
- Pear is collaborating with Empatica, a pioneer in developing medical wearables and digital biomarkers, to explore using wearable sensors to evaluate withdrawal symptoms in patients with substance use disorder (SUD), opioid use disorder (OUD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD). Empatica’s smartwatches are FDA cleared and CE-marked, and are designed to track heart rate, fine locomotor behaviors, skin temperature, and skin conductance to quantify autonomic nervous system response.
- Pear is collaborating with etectRx, an innovator in medication adherence technology, to explore the development of digital therapeutics combined with digital pills. etectRx’s ID-Cap System, a digital pill system that is FDA cleared as an ingestible event marker, is designed to guide digital, patient-centric, and value-based therapeutic interventions to enhance medication adherence and improve patient outcomes.
- Pear has licensed an artificial intelligence-enabled keystroke detection algorithm from KeyWise, a developer of science-backed digital biomarkers through smartphone keyboard interactions. Pear intends to build capabilities to track and produce individualized mental health metrics with natural language processing in PDTs. Pear licensed the technology to develop and clinically validate digital biomarkers across a variety of conditions, including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, substance use disorder, opioid use disorder, insomnia and pain.
- In 2020, Pear licensed from Winterlight Labs machine learning-based voice digital biomarkers that analyze and assess cognitive health. Pear licensed the technology to develop and clinically validate digital biomarkers for a variety of diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, depression, insomnia, schizophrenia, opioid use disorder, and substance use disorder.
On the record
“We are excited to announce these agreements, which expand the leading PDT platform and create optionality as the space grows beyond neurobehavioral therapies,” said Corey McCann, M.D., Ph.D., President and CEO of Pear. “Accessing external technologies allows us to build PDTs with new capabilities and continue to broaden their scope and effectiveness. With the ability to collect and quantify information in real-world settings and to potentially personalize products in real-time, PDTs present the opportunity to truly revolutionize healthcare.”
The context
The newly licensed technologies enable the building of a comprehensive product offering for remote sensing of patient physiology. Pear’s physiologic sensing portfolio could allow for real-time personalization of digital therapeutic content and pharmaceutical dosing, creating the opportunity for enhanced patient outcomes across a wide range of disease states.