OREANDA-NEWS. IXICO plc (Ticker: IXI) ('IXICO' or the 'Company'), the brain health company, is pleased to announce that Cygnus, a real world digital data collection study from people with cognitive impairment and dementia,  has joined the high profile Dementias Platform UK (DPUK).

The four NHS Trusts participating in the project have now initiated enrolment in the mehealth® digital technology platform which is being deployed for data collection and management. Consumer wearable devices containing accelerometers will also be deployed to collect information on sleep and activity.  The Cygnus study aims to advance the development of digital healthcare in patients with cognitive impairment and dementia and their caregivers.

By joining Dementias Platform UK, Cygnus is now part of a high profile collaborative project that includes leading academic centres and pharmaceutical companies GSK, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.  IXICO's mehealth® platform is being used for data collection from participating services and patients and their caregivers. The mehealth® digital technology platform formed part of the Optimal Medicine acquisition in December 2015.

Professor Derek Hill, Chief Executive of IXICO, commented: 

"We believe digital technologies will improve the lives of both people with cognitive impairment and dementia and their families, potentially transforming how treatments are developed and delivered. The IXICO sponsored Cygnus project is now using such technologies in community memory services in the North of England.  We are pleased our recently-acquired mehealth® platform is supporting this project in partnership with global pharmaceutical companies within the Dementias Platform UK."

Professor John Gallacher, Director of Dementias Platform UK commented:

"We are delighted that IXICO's Cygnus cohort is contributing data into the secure DPUK data portal. Not only does this support the open science vision of the Dementias Platform, but it transforms the way that industry and academic collaborations can be used to develop innovative treatments. We are particularly excited that Cygnus is pioneering the use of digital technologies including mobile devices and wearables to bring a real world evidence emphasis to the DPUK data portal."

 

About IXICO

IXICO's innovative and proprietary digital healthcare technologies help those involved in researching and treating serious diseases to capture and analyse clinical data to make rapid, informed decisions.  In clinical research this includes the phenotyping of patients, quantification of disease pathology and measurement of patient outcomes.  In clinical practice the mobile health and digital decision support technologies aid diagnosis, patient engagement and monitoring. IXICO is also collaborating with partners to develop companion digital health products targeted at improving patient outcomes.

The Company's brain health focus includes Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, multiple sclerosis, behavioural health, child and adolescent mental health.

About mehealth®

The mehealth® platform integrates web-based and mobile technologies for clinicians, patients and care-givers for use in both clinical care and clinical trial settings. In clinical practice it allows care to be initiated and adapted according to the patients' unique profile and evolving needs. The software has been used in the care of over 12,000 children with ADHD across the US and has been shown in a randomised trial to improve concordance with clinical guidelines. In clinical trials mehealth enables the collection of data from multiple environments and informants, including the integration of remote monitoring wearables, smartphone applications and patient- and caregiver-facing web-based portals.

About the Cygnus project

Cygnus is a two year project funded by Innovate UK and brings together four Mental Health Trusts in the North of England, the Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA), IXICO and the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measures (ICHOM). The project is the first implementation of the recently published ICHOM dementia standard dataset.

The Mental Health Trusts and lead investigators participating in the project are:

·     Manchester Health and Social Care Trust / University of Manchester

·     Mersey Care

·     Tee, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust

·     Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust

The project aims to enrol 500 participants: patients referred to Memory Assessment Services at the participant Trusts with suspected dementia and their caregivers.

Key objectives of the Cygnus study are:

· To evaluate the feasibility of web-based, mobile and wearable technologies as a means to collect high quality and actionable data from patients and their care givers;

· Linking these measurements to data about outcomes and episodes of care;

· To provide a well-characterised population who have consented to contact about future evaluation of technologies and interventions that might benefit patients and caregivers.

More information is available on www.ecygnus.com

About DPUK

Established by the Medical Research Council in June 2014, DPUK is a ?53 million collaboration between universities and drug companies to transform the best dementia research into the best treatments as quickly as possible.

It combines the power of different types of population study to compare healthy people with people at all stages of dementias and can be used to look at how this is affected by other conditions that people may have.

It actively encourages leading researchers to work together, giving them better access to the wealth of information on health and lifestyle through huge population studies and arms them with the latest technology, to scan the body and brain and analyse tests.

It also spearheads 'experimental medicine' research, which are 'first in human' studies, testing out new treatments, new devices, improvements in diagnoses for the first time in people and also looking at repurposing drugs - trying out treatments which are already on the market, but used for a different condition, to see how they might benefit those with dementia. DPUK forms a central pillar in the delivery of the UK Prime Minister's Challenge on dementia.

More information is available on www.dementiasplatform.uk