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Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody! Saul Marquez, and welcome back to the HLTH Matters podcast straight here from the HLTH event in Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m privileged to have two amazing guests join me today. First, I want to introduce Pierre Leurent. He is the president of Aptar Digital Health. He’s a CEO and co-founder of Voluntis, a leading digital therapeutic company acquired by Aptar Group in 2021. Pierre has over 20 years of experience in digital health in the United States and Europe. Prior to starting Voluntis, he worked at GE Healthcare and its medical imaging software division and at Health Center Internet Services, a vendor of EMR Solutions based in Silicon Valley. He’s a founding director of the Digital Therapeutics Alliance, of which he served as chairman and member of the Advamed’s Digital Health Executive Leadership Group. Pierre previously co-chaired the Digital Therapeutics Task Force of the Personal Connected Health Alliance, a member of HIMSS, and chaired the eHealth France Alliance. He holds the MHS from École Centrale Paris. I’m also joined by Sai Shankar. He is the president of Aptar Digital Health. And Sai has more than 20 years of experience across the pharmaceuticals, medical device, and digital health business verticals. He’s been an intrapreneur at Aptar Building, the Digital Health Division. Prior to joining Aptar in 2017, Sai worked for 15 years at Allergan and Sanofi. As the president of Aptar Digital Health, Sai is responsible for the overall P&L of the business in addition to the organic growth of the connected device business. He has overseen acquisition of digital health companies like Voluntis and Cohero Health, as well as equity investments, various startups like Propel, Propeller Health and Sonmol, and Navia. So really just a global footprint and an amazing innovator in healthcare. I want to welcome both Sai and Pierre to the podcast. Gentlemen, thanks so much for being with me today.
Pierre Leurent:
Thank you.
Sai Shankar:
Thanks for having us.
Pierre Leurent:
Glad to be here.
Saul Marquez:
Oh, my God, yeah. So it’s been an amazing meeting at HLTH this year and we’re covering so many amazing, transformative companies, Aptar Digital is one of those. And so before we dive into what exactly Aptar is, what you guys do, let’s get to know you guys a little bit better. So Sai, Pierre, talk to us about what inspires your work in healthcare.
Pierre Leurent:
So I’m Pierre Leurent. I am originally a co-founder and CEO of Voluntis. It’s a company that Aptar acquired last year. I’ve spent the last 20 years working in digital health, first in large companies like GE Healthcare and also a vendor of electronic medical records in Silicon Valley. So great solutions for healthcare professionals, but I also saw the great potential that digital technologies could bring to support patients more directly. So that’s led me to start Voluntis at the first place, or now, you know, we are part of the group on the, we can take that journey to the next level.
Sai Shankar:
Sai Shankar, I actually started the digital health practice within Aptar, I was employee one within the company. 12 years back, I was trying to do my own startup with the idea of better-supporting nursing homes because you have a lot of medication mistakes out there. That idea kind of went sideways a little bit, but it eventually came back in a different form factor within Aptar. Over the last few years, Aptar has invested significantly in the digital space and allows big acquisition, and one of the best ones we’ve ever done is Voluntis, and having them into our fold has been very strategic for our business.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. Well, thank you for sharing a little bit about both of you. We’ve begun to uncover what Aptar does, but why don’t we get into it? Who is Aptar Digital Health and what’s the mission?
Sai Shankar:
So Aptar Digital Health Division, within Aptar Group, Aptar is a public traded company, $7 billion market cap, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and they’ve got three segments within the organization, one is the pharma organization. So we fall under the pharma organization, and Aptar Digital Health is focusing on looking at different ways of addressing patient needs through digital interventions, whether it’s connecting them with data that we collect from drug adherence modules, we look at diagnostic assessments, we look at DTX solutions for our patients to better support in their care delivery. We also focusing on outcomes and how we can better support patients in outcomes. That’s how we bring it all together on Aptar Digital Health.
Saul Marquez:
Now, thanks for sharing that. Anything to add, Pierre, there?
Pierre Leurent:
Well, I think, you know, Aptar Digital Health practice, creates software solutions, you know, connected devices to, that go around drugs. We also provide services to support patients along the way of their treatment journey. Everything we’re doing is aimed at improving patients’ experience and outcomes along the way of their treatment journey.
Saul Marquez:
Thank you for that. Now let’s connect on this concept of patient experience. It’s critical and it keeps coming up. Patient experience, not satisfaction anymore, but experience with a convergence of consumer health companies, consumer companies like Apple and Amazon coming into the space. It’s never been important. Talk to us about how Aptar Digital helps enhance the patient experience.
Pierre Leurent:
So patients who have chronic disease in particular, I mean, they have a lot of needs along their treatment journey. I mean, they use drugs that are sometimes complex to administer, you know, they need to figure out how to inject some certain drugs in too, also understand what’s the right dose of treatment that they should inject. You know, sometimes they have side effects associated with the therapies that they’re using and, you know, they need better answers to also help support this treatment journey. So digital technology can go a long way to provide guidance to patients to help them better self-manage their therapy on a daily basis and also be more connected with their healthcare team remotely. So to support patients, we have spent a lot of time to look at specific use cases where we can bring value. So, for example, we have now solutions that patients can use on their smartphone that are, you know, providing decision-support recommendations to patients. So, for example, to tell them, okay, what’s the right dose of this treatment that they should get? What should it be doing? What side effects occur? Should they change their behavior? Should they add a symptomatic drug at a certain dosage? Should they contact their healthcare team immediately? And so on, so you have a first level of, let’s say, immediate real-time answers, you know, thanks to our applications. So we provide interventions that are very personalized for patients. And these software solutions, by the way, are also regulated as medical devices, so we have to go through the rigorous development process, just like for other medical devices. So we need to get regulatory clearance in the different countries where we have these solutions. We also do clinical trials, also, to assess whether these interventions are effective to support patients. So a lot of focus in really supporting patients every day on their treatment journey. The second part is really more, how we can have a more continuous way of managing patients? How we can bridge the gap between the patients and their care team? In many cases, patients are, let’s say, alone, they need to use treatments at home sometimes, and we make data available to the care team remotely so that the care team can not only wait for the next visit, but also intervene as necessary proactively according to the data that they see with patients health studies. So that kind of model is more reactive, more personal, more proactive, personalized medicine. And yes, it will not only bring clinical benefits, it’s also going to generate more and more savings for the healthcare system because we can also contribute to reducing unnecessary hospitalizations on ER visits because we can have an early intervention.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, I think that’s great. Sai, anything to add there?
Sai Shankar:
I mean, Pierre sum it up pretty well together. One focus is empowerment, right? We really focus on patient empowerment and really bringing control back to their lives, and a lot of times it’s really anxiety, which causes a lot of other issues that come into play. So we look at the journey mapping. So we have a sister organization with an app that they’re really focused on patient services and they’re called Global Medical. And what they are really doing is also looking at journey mapping for what the patients are going through in a given therapeutic area or disease class, etc. So not all patients are the same, not all diseases are the same, the challenges are different. So when you journey map that, then we can look at different ways to build interventions for them and then come up with a solution that simplified their interaction with their drugs or side effects, etc. So that empowerment is what we want to really focus on.
Saul Marquez:
That’s great. Now just to question, to clarify, the digital solutions that Aptar provides, are they available to all pharma companies, or are these tools that you guys use for your own drugs?
Pierre Leurent:
So Aptar doesn’t make drugs, I mean.
Saul Marquez:
Oh, okay, cool. So that’s a good clarification point.
Pierre Leurent:
Aptar makes technology for companies. So everything that Aptar Pharma does is to partner with pharma companies for, you know, in many different disease areas. Aptar started its journey around drug deliveries, for example, inhalers or other kinds of delivery routes that are, you know, made by pharma. So you think about everything around the drug, that’s, you know, what, you know, Aptar focuses on. So it’s a medtech company. It’s interesting because really already active across a number of therapeutic areas. So respiratory is a big one for Aptar, you know, historically, but we now work in oncology where side effects management is particularly important. Immunology, neurology, diabetes, cardiovascular, rare disease, those are areas for example, we have a lot of unmet needs and we have promising use cases for our technology.
Saul Marquez:
Thanks for clarifying that. So really any pharma company that’s looking for ways to optimize, whether it’s adherence or effectiveness of the drug, Aptar has a solution.
Pierre Leurent:
Yes, and we like to say that we want to make good treatments better, and we have very effective promising drugs today on the market, but you need to go through the extra mile. And also digital can help unleash the full value of medicines, not only in terms of clinical efficacy, but also by mitigating the risk profile of the drugs, because they come also with their burden.
Saul Marquez:
Absolutely, okay, great, thanks for clarifying. So there you have it folks, available across all pharma companies. If you are a pharma company leader, consider them. You’ve probably heard of them, and if you haven’t, well, now you know about them, and we’ll leave a link to them and how to get ahold of them in the show notes, so make sure you check those out. What are Aptar Digital Health key areas of expertise and what makes Aptar Digital Health, or ADH, different?
Pierre Leurent:
Thank you, because we are already grateful to work with a large number of, you know, leading pharma companies today. So I want to thank them for their trust, but I think we’ve been around for a certain time already. So we provide a robust industrial approach to solving these questions. So we have, I think, one of the largest portfolio of collaborations in terms of digital therapeutics in pharma today in the market, so we are experienced. We have, I think also a mature industrial approach not only in terms of technology but regulatory. Also, we have achieved over 15 regulatory clearances for our products in North America and Europe. We are expanding to Asia, by the way, at the moment, also starting with Japan.
Saul Marquez:
Congratulations.
Pierre Leurent:
Thank you. And we also do activities on the side of our pharma partnerships, by the way. So we keep investing in R&D, we do our own clinical trials with certain provider groups, so we want to stay ahead of what’s next. And, you know, keep investing, and bringing more value to patients. So the good news about these kinds of interventions that they can evolve over time, they can get better, so we get a lot of insights by analyzing the data that we collect, you know, along the way of our solutions, that really helps make a big difference. At the end of the day, I think it’s the quality of our teams, it’s every expert in the activity that we are involved in, so you have a lot of expertise in the company and that’s pretty well valued by our partners when they work with us.
Saul Marquez:
Awesome.
Sai Shankar:
The other area I would say is, when you look at Aptar, it’s an industrial hub supporting the digital evolution that’s happening in the industry, and we don’t have runway issues like some of our other competitors in the space. But also we are one of the few companies who have across-connected devices, diagnostics, detect solutions, plus patient services. There are very few companies are devoting all of that and not in one therapeutic area, but going across multiple therapeutic areas. That I would say another big differentiator, plus we have global footprint. We are in the US, we’re in Europe, we are in Japan, we will be launching in Latin America very soon. So we’ve got a very broad footprint leveraging also Aptar’s network today, so that goes a long way.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, no, thank you for that, Sai.
Pierre Leurent:
Yeah, I think also science is important in what we’re doing because, at the end of the day, you have to provide meaningful interventions for patients. And we have a medical affairs team that has been created like ten years ago now. We have specific focus with our medical experts on designing interventions that make a positive impact for patients. It’s not necessarily easy to find exactly the right recipe in what is of value for patients. So we spend a lot of time working with patients and also trying to understand their needs carefully, and to design interventions, that matters.
Saul Marquez:
Fantastic, wow, that’s so great, and it’s fantastic to learn about your business and how you guys are different. You’re an end-to-end solution for any pharma company that desires to improve outcomes, access, etc. Thank you guys so much. This is such an incredible opportunity to connect with both of you, Pierre and Sai. What closing thought would you leave to the listeners as we wrap this up?
Pierre Leurent:
It’s just the beginning of the journey. We have been around here for multiple years already. I think I’m particularly excited about the new ways we can support patients in the future. Every day we have opportunities to identify new use cases. I can just mention one example. We are expanding to dermatology, so now you can start using your smartphone to keep track of your skin issues with a picture and so on. So it’s fascinating how we can probably leverage, you know, the advances in digital technology to make a positive impact for our patients. So it’s really the beginning and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
Saul Marquez:
It’s exciting. Thank you, Pierre. Sai?
Sai Shankar:
I mean, we’re really putting the patient at the center of everything. Our entire discussion, if you look at our tagline, is really enhancing patient experiences. That’s really our focus. You start there and everything else falls in place. So we’re really going to be making sure that we actually add value to what the patient is going through and ensuring the outcomes are there. That’s going to lead to better outcomes, which means you got better engagement. It’s obviously going to lead to all the other things we’re promising here, Saul.
Saul Marquez:
Well, that’s fantastic, guys, thank you so much. And for anybody that wants to learn more, where can they visit you guys online?
Pierre Leurent:
So we have a website, and find information about Aptar Digital health. We also have, you know, our LinkedIn profiles. You can reach out at LinkedIn if you want to get ahold of us.
Sai Shankar:
Yep.
Saul Marquez:
Awesome, well, folks, there you have it. Aptar Digital Health, Sai and Pierre. We’ll leave all the links to our discussion in the show notes for today’s podcast. So go there, you’ll see the LinkedIn bios as well as links to Aptar Digital Health, and make sure you subscribe to this podcast because that’s how you make sure you get all of these interviews with amazing leaders like these two. Thank you both for being with us today.
Pierre Leurent:
Thank you.
Sai Shankar:
Thanks for having us.
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