The Starting Point of

Through our daily work we are highly sensibilized to the fact that healthcare systems are facing substantial issues. Besides the general cost pressure, healthcare systems do also face the challenge of over-worked HCP, limited bed stock and on top patients being negatively impacted by hospital acquired infections as well as the increasing threat of AMR (anti-microbial resistance). On top, there are hardly any new antibiotics available or on the horizon due to very limited ongoing R&D work in this area. Hence, we identified several unmet needs:

  • i. Urgent need to reduce unnecessary work of health care professionals (e.g. eliminating compounding and making use of the medical capacity in the best possible way)
  • ii. Urgent need to better leverage “old” antibiotics
  • iii. Clinical studies indicating a substantial gap in efficacy of parental antibiotic treatments (lack of using PK/PD dosing principles) resulting in poor treatment outcome of treatment and AMR risks

For those reasons countries with high pressure on health care systems already have a growing OPAT market . Outpatient Parenteral Antibiotic Therapy (OPAT) allows patients who are medically stable and whose only reason for inpatient stay is the requirement for Intravenous Antibiotics. Various studies show that this patient group can be safely and effectively treated in an outpatient setting. The administration of intravenous antibiotics is individually tailored, through assessment, in one of three ways:

  • Self-administration by patient or family member (after appropriate training) – currently still very rare
  • Daily attendance at the OPAT center
  • Home visits by an OPAT community nurse

The doctor prescribing the antimicrobial treatment for OPAT assumes clinical responsibility for the drug and the consequences of its use. This method of treatment is very common in HIC such as US, UK and Australia.

Based on above stated unmet needs our initial business idea was heavily focused on:

  • i. Providing options to facilitate high complex community-based care through the provision of outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) solutions
  • ii. Infusion device development for optimizing delivery of intravenous therapy to address infectious diseases and mitigate the global threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR)

 

The Evolution of our Idea

During our evaluations and research, we identified substantial additional benefits of our device which led to a further enhancement and evolution of our thinking regarding the use cases for our device. Much more than focusing only on one use case, our revIVe device will represent a platform solution. On the one hand supporting the OPAT use in high-income-countries (HIC) and on the other hand providing a substantial improvement in therapy for low-and-mid-income-countries (LMIC):

  • i. Development of a platform that revolutionizes existing paradigms for parenteral therapies with the goal of
    • enhancing the safety and quality of life (QoL) for the patients
    • delivering cost effective solutions enabling sustainability of healthcare systems
  • ii. Focus on LMIC, addressing:
    • Climate related in-use stability issues
    • Affordability
    • Lack of qualified health-care professionals
    • Lack of adequate hygiene procedures

Our vision as the team is heavily formed and driven by the fact that each member of the team has been working in the pharmaceutical industry with a strong focus on antibiotics. We as a team represent:

  • > 70 years of combined pharmaceutical experience, heavily driven by providing impact & equitable access
  • Multi-functional experience: pharmacy, pharmaceutical engineering, medicine, finance, law, general mgmt.
  • Experience across the full product life-cycle / value-chain and beyond: portfolio, development, manufacturing, commercial as well as consultancy, health agency GMP inspections etc.

Dr. Eva Littringer – „Out-of-the-Box-Thinker“ in the pharmaceutical industry, with in-depth knowledge of pharmaceutical product development and extensive experience in innovation management started the journey in 2019.

Eva Littringer

Founder