FDA clearance in 2009 for its Bluetooth-enabled device for tracking blood glucose levels. But the startup encountered stiff resistance from entrenched competitors, and Entra Health CEO Rick Strobridge says the company “really survived and grew” by shifting its focus to clinical trials.
Entra Health is now providing its wireless blood glucose tracking technology in clinical trials with five big pharma companies, including Eli Lilly, Strobridge says. (Under its contracts, Entra Health is prohibited from disclosing its other big pharma customers.)
“Our sweet spot has been with big pharmas that are involved in diabetes care,” says Strobridge. Government regulators in 50 countries (China gave its approval at the end of 2014) have approved Entra Health’s wireless blood glucose device, and marketing chief Bruce Ahern says Entra Health is selling its devices to contract research organizations that conduct clinical trials in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
“We started with glucose monitoring, but half of all diabetics also have high blood pressure,” Strobridge says. So Entra Health has been adding wireless sensor capabilities to remotely monitor blood pressure, weight, and heart data.
Entra Health also was one of the first healthtech startups to integrate Qualcomm’s 2net technology. Strobridge says the company’s big pharma customers especially like the architecture of MyhealthPoint, the mobile app and back-end system that Entra Health developed for collecting data from multiple sensors, and for managing and mining the database.
Novartis already is using Qualcomm Life’s 2net technology to collect biometric data in patients’ homes as part of an existing clinical trial with chronic lung disease patients, according to Qualcomm Life’s Valencia. “What they are looking to us for is that connection with the patient, which is really the data, the biometric data,” he says.
While the pharmaceutical industry was initially resistant to the adoption of new wireless health technologies, Valencia says big pharmas are now looking to support their case for “improved outcomes and lower health costs,” which is rapidly becoming the new mantra in their regulatory approval process.
“Big pharma has bought into the idea and fully believes that healthcare as it is today is [economically] unsustainable, and that we’re moving away from ‘fee for service’ to an outcomes-based model,” Valencia says. “And in order to promote outcomes, they need data.”
At the Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems, Patrick predicts there will be an increasing emphasis on wireless data collection, especially as healthcare regulators realize the differences in data quality. “If you can measure it objectively rather than subjectively,” Patrick says, “you will be asked by reviewers, ‘Why didn’t you do that?”
