Singapore-based Holmusk is working the healthcare business sector of Merck on the former’s GlycoLeap mobile digital therapeutics platform that uses a highly data-driven approach to deliver personalized dietary feedback, interactive educational lessons, and one-to-one guidance with a qualified health coach.
The goal is to help patients achieve weight loss and improved blood glucose control. Lifestyle and behaviour change are foundational for good management of patients with prediabetes and diabetes, yet often difficult to implement by healthcare providers due to limited resources and lack of time.
Digital health solutions like GlycoLeap have the potential to track, personalise and influence patient behaviours in an effective, engaging and scalable way.
By linking patients with a personal health coach, GlycoLeap will complement medications for diabetes and prediabetes and contribute to diabetes prevention and improving chronic disease outcomes.
Ulrike Hostalek, head of GMA General Medicine and Endocrinology at the Healthcare business sector of Merck, said that expanding the therapeutic offering beyond the medication is a key pillar of how they envisage to support patients and contribute to better treatment outcomes.
“With Holmusk we are glad to have found a partner who is able to deliver an evidence-based and scalable program to relevant patients across Southeast Asia, a region highly impacted by prediabetes,” said Hostalek.
Yau Teng Yan, chief of digital therapeutics at Holmusk, said the partnership is “an important step in the right direction” to provide patients in Asia-Pacific with a culturally-tailored digital tool for holistic care.
Beginning with China, Malaysia and Hong Kong, patients with diabetes and/or prediabetes — depending on the marketing authorisation in each country — will be able to get access to GlycoLeap through their doctors later this year.
