Domo Health and Roche Pharma innovate in digital health to improve the lives of patients with neuromuscular diseases

LAUSANNE, Switzerland, January 13, 2021 –

Domo Health, a leader in digital health, announces a pilot project with Roche Pharma (Switzerland) Ltd aimed at improving the quality of life of people living with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a rare neuromuscular disease.

For people living with SMA, like many people with chronic conditions, digital health technologies bear the potential to monitor disease progression in real-life, continuously and in a holistic manner, and to provide solutions to support people in living an independent life and feeling safer and freer, at home and on the go.

As part of the collaboration between Roche and Domo Health, Roche is supporting a project during which Domo will adapt its evolutive platform to the needs of SMA patients. This private cloud platform aggregates information available from multiple sources such as smart watches, IoT (Internet of Things) platform or medical devices. Patients will have access to their data in real-time through a mobile application, allowing them to monitor and potentially optimize their care and well-being, and alerts will be proactively or automatically triggered in case of an emergency.

The artificial intelligence and machine learning technology developed by Domo Health has the potential to improve the care of SMA patients by predicting or detecting early potential sudden health deteriorations. These algorithms were built using billions of behavioural and physiological data points collected during multiple clinical research studies conducted in collaboration with several Swiss university hospitals (CHUV, Lausanne and Inselspital, Bern) and internationally renowned institutes (EPFL, Lausanne and a bioengineering lab of Bern University). Adapted to SMA, this unique technology has the potential to transform the care of SMA patients and improve their safety and their independence.

Anne Marquet, SMA Rare Conditions Partner for Switzerland at Roche, said: “We look forward to leveraging Domo Health’s approach to bring innovative solutions to the needs of SMA patients and are thrilled to work with SMA Schweiz and with the whole SMA community to co-create the best solutions for patients, families and caregivers and for the medical team looking after them. I believe our partnership with DomoSafety will pave the way for new solutions to some of the most important needs of people living with SMA”.

Guillaume DuPasquier, CEO of Domo Health added: “We are very excited to partner with Roche and explore solutions to improve the lives of patients with this rare disease. We look forward to adapting our tools to the needs of patients with SMA and improving their quality of life.”

About SMA

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a severe, inherited, progressive neuromuscular disease that causes devastating muscle atrophy and disease-related complications. It is the most common genetic cause of infant mortality and one of the most common rare diseases, affecting approximately one in 11,000 babies. SMA leads to the progressive loss of nerve cells in the spinal cord that control muscle movement. Depending on the type of SMA, an individual’s physical strength and their ability to walk, eat or breathe can be significantly diminished or lost.

SMA is caused by a mutation in the survival motor neuron 1 (SMN1) gene that results in a deficiency of SMN protein. SMN protein is found throughout the body and increasing evidence suggests SMA is a multi-system disorder and the loss of SMN protein may affect many tissues and cells, which can stop the body from functioning.

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