COPD Foundation announces collaboration with Wanda Health and ProAxsis
Miami & Belfast, Northern Ireland (November 26, 2024) - The COPD Foundation announces Wanda Health and ProAxsis as partners in the Foundation's Digital Health Corporate Social Responsibility program. Through this program, the Foundation expands its support of innovations aimed at improving the lives of millions living with chronic lung diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bronchiectasis.
COPD comprises several conditions, including chronic bronchitis and emphysema, and can be caused by genetics and irritants like smoke or pollution. The disease affects more than 30 million Americans and is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide, yet awareness of the disease's symptoms, methods to reduce risk and disease management remains poor. Symptoms include breathlessness, fatigue and chronic cough.
Bronchiectasis is a chronic lung disease characterized by enlarged airways that are thickened and/or scarred. These permanently widened airways lead to a buildup of mucus and impaired clearance of bacteria from the lungs. Between 340,000 and 522,000 adults are receiving treatment in the U.S.
"At the COPD Foundation, we are dedicated to collaborating on innovative initiatives that empower individuals living with chronic lung diseases to better manage their health," said Jean Wright, M.D., MBA, CEO of the COPD Foundation. "While there is no cure for COPD or bronchiectasis yet, effective disease management can make a significant difference in symptom relief and quality of life. By collaborating with Wanda Health and ProAxsis, we aim to raise awareness about remote patient monitoring and diagnostic technologies that offer timely insights into health changes while supporting proactive care for those affected by chronic lung diseases, including COPD and bronchiectasis."
Wanda Health's platform enables remote patient monitoring (RPM) and virtual care, offering health care providers valuable insight into a person's health patterns. The platform helps detect early warning signs of exacerbations, such as worsening shortness of breath or increased cough, allowing for timely interventions to help prevent complications and hospitalizations.
"Remote patient monitoring is revolutionary for individuals who are suffering from chronic health conditions, including those with respiratory issues," said Tom Smith, CEO of Wanda Health. "Wanda's platform enables both patients and providers to access longitudinal data improving their ability to manage and deliver care more effectively. We are honored to be a trusted partner of the COPD Foundation, and we look forward to collaborating with health care professionals and organizations to improve patient outcomes and quality of life."
ProAxsis offers specialized respiratory in vitro diagnostic tools, enabling the quantification of active protease biomarkers associated with respiratory disease. These biomarkers have been linked with the severity and progression of diseases like COPD and bronchiectasis. This approach helps health care providers monitor a person's lung health more closely, while supporting proactive adjustments to care plans.
"Our NEATstik® point-of-care test allows COPD patients and health care providers to monitor levels of active neutrophil elastase in sputum. Monitoring of this biomarker could aid in earlier clinical intervention and optimized treatment to improve outcomes for COPD patients," said Alan Markey, Chairman of ProAxsis. "We are pleased to partner with the COPD Foundation. This collaboration will help expand our access to the broader COPD community and facilitate access to valuable insights from patients and health care providers."
For more information about the COPD Foundation, visit copdfoundation.org. For more information about Wanda Health, visit wandahealth.com. For more information about ProAxsis, visit proaxsis.com.
###
About the COPD Foundation
The COPD Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help millions of people live longer and healthier lives by advancing research, advocacy, and awareness to stop COPD, bronchiectasis, and NTM lung disease. The Foundation does this through scientific research, education, advocacy, and awareness to prevent disease, slow progression, and find a cure. For more information, visit copdfoundation.org or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About Wanda Health
Wanda Health is an intelligent platform for remote patient monitoring and virtual care. Wanda Health is empowering healthcare providers and payers with early detection of exacerbations in patients with acute, chronic, and specialty diseases, helping them speed interventions, prevent adverse events, and improve patient adherence. The company is a UCLA-spin-out focused on intelligent remote monitoring of physiological data, patient engagement and healthcare analytics for post-acute care, chronic disease patients and population health. Wanda's platform enables the control and reduction of hospitalization and readmission rates through a Remote Patient Monitoring System that collects data from patients' homes or community settings and provides it to clinicians, highlighting high risks cohorts. Wanda also uses its comprehensive multi-modality patient engagement tools to ensure that adherence to treatment protocols increases, improving patient outcomes. This patient centric approach to care model delivery, combined with secure computing and revolutionary data mining and analytics provides actionable insights to the care provider to improve patient outcomes, whilst reducing the cost of care of chronic conditions. For more information, visit wandahealth.com.
About ProAxsis
ProAxsis is a commercial medtech company with a focus on respiratory diagnostics, a growing global burden exacerbated in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. ProAxsis uses its proprietary ProteaseTag® technology to develop laboratory-based assays and rapid point-of-care tests for the measurement of active protease biomarkers associated with chronic respiratory diseases such as COPD, cystic fibrosis and bronchiectasis. The company is a spin-out of Queen's University Belfast. The company has refined its product portfolio alongside a quality laboratory, enabling commercialization of its technology through clinical services to pharma/biotech industry clients, and via direct kit sales to researchers globally. The company's key development project is focused on enhancing its offering for ongoing patient monitoring at POC in respiratory disease patients via its CE marked lateral flow test (NEATstik). For more information, visit proaxsis.com.
Contact:
Brittany Irish
805-465-2497
mediarelations@copdfoundation.org