Meet the Swedish e-Health company Pilloxa

Product launched and funding round secured in 2018

The Swedish company Pilloxa addresses the challenge of poor adherence to medication. “Did you know that hundreds of thousands of patients in the EU are dying every year from poor adherence?” says Per Nilsson, head of sales and finance and co-founder of Pilloxa.

Pictured: PilloxaOne and Per Nilsson

For some specific conditions, like transplantation and atrial fibrillation, adherence is crucial to a positive outcome. Missing a dose every now and then might not seem like a big problem.

The reality is that it is about as many people dying from poor medication adherence as it is from strokes.

On top of that, millions are not living as well as they could if they would have been adherent to their medication. Furthermore, poor adherence is a burden for society and healthcare systems alike.

Pilloxa has developed a patient-centric adherence platform connected to smart hardware, with the first hardware being a smart pillbox with built in sensors tracking in real time when doses are taken. The smartphone application will notify, remind, inform and thereby help patients take their medication properly over time.

It is user-centric and incorporates modern functionalities with the aim of becoming a one-stop shop platform for people who take daily medication. This is extremely important since the new large and growing segment of population living healthy and long lives with chronic conditions, demands simplicity and personalisation.

“There is a perception that the elderly are those who do not take medications regularly, but new research shows that the smartphone generation is worse in adhering to medication.” says Per. We developed a solution addressing the needs of these new types of patients.

Pilloxa is a spin-off of the Clinical Innovation Fellowship programme in 2015, which developed its first prototype in 2016, received its CE-mark in 2017 and launched its first product Pilloxa One in 2018.

The product has already sold hundreds of units to international pharma companies and it is now used in three clinical trials in prominent Swedish hospitals with hundreds of patients in order to gain clinical evidence for the product.

EIT Health is one of the backers in this acceleration: Pilloxa participated in the EIT Health Product and Market Fit programme in 2017 and received HeadStart funding in 2018.

This year, Pilloxa has successfully raised € 500 000 from well-known Swedish tech-profiles.

The clinical trials that use PilloxaOne measure adherence for enrolled patients even in the control group. The latter is used alongside qualitative evaluations – surveys with both patients and healthcare staff.

“We want to get statistically significant data that we increase adherence in order to broaden our claims but also to make a case for healthcare payers. Today in clinical trials, measuring adherence usually consists in counting pills manually; healthcare staff have no idea if or when enroled patients take their medication. Identifying patients real time that are at risk of dropping out is of great value; thus patient enrolment is very expensive.” adds Per.

Pilloxa is now eager to initiate additional projects in areas where adherence and patient engagement is of uttermost importance. “We are actively looking for more organisations to partner with, within the area of pharmaceutical industry (both marketing/sales and clinical operations), CROs, healthcare organisations and private health insurance companies.”

EIT Health is looking forward to Pilloxa’s further successful developments and to hearing about the impact on patients and society from the first clinical trials.