From digital therapeutics to personalized mental health solutions: Pear Therapeutics expands platform via partnerships with Empatica, etectRx, KeyWise, and Winterlight

by

Pear Ther­a­peu­tics Expands Plat­form with Dig­i­tal Bio­mark­ers, Machine Learn­ing Algo­rithms and Sen­sor-Based Tech­nolo­gies (press release):

Pear Ther­a­peu­tics, Inc. announced today that it has entered into agree­ments with mul­ti­ple tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, includ­ing Empat­i­ca Inc., etec­tRx, Inc., and Key­Wise, Inc. 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.

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.

  • 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, Inc., 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.

News in Context: