NIDA-Funded Study to Address PrEP Adherence

GAINESVILLE – etectRx™, Inc. (etectRx™), a privately held digital health company, today announced that its FDA-cleared digital pill, the ID-Cap System™, will be utilized in a new clinical study, dubbed “SmartSteps,” aimed at determining how digital phenotyping can be used to address adherence to Emtricitabine-Tenofovir DF Oral Tablet. The study will be conducted in conjunction with Fenway Health.

The study’s Principal Investigator, Peter R. Chai, M.D., M.M.S. of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was recently recognized with the prestigious Avenir Award for his extensive work with HIV/AIDS research. As an honoree for the Avenir Award, Dr. Chai was awarded funds to support research of his choice. Dr. Chai, who has worked extensively with etectRx’s ID-Cap System, decided to continue his use of ID-Cap System, and utilize the grant to fund the SmartSteps Study.

“I’ve collaborated with etectRx for many years now in pursuit of learning more about the context of adherence, and this study was the logical next step,” said Dr. Chai. “The SmartSteps Study will allow us to respond to nonadherence closer to its occurrence through the use of digital phenotyping and utilization of the ID-Cap System as a digital biomarker for nonadherence.”

SmartSteps will utilize etectRx’s ID-Cap System to detect PrEP adherence within the study’s subjects, as well as a smartphone app that allows researchers to create digital phenotyping of patients. The aim is to allow researchers to predict contexts in which PrEP nonadherence is likely to occur and create interventions to increase future adherence.

“With this study, we are seeking to understand situations in which people forget to take their medication and objectify the situations. As we leverage new information, we will be able to change the paradigm from responding to nonadherence, to anticipating and mitigating it,” said Chai.

A seamless, end-to-end solution for monitoring and tracking oral medication adherence in real time, the ID-Cap System consists of a dashboard to provide researchers real time insight to each participant’s ingestion history and adherence, a smartphone app used by the participants to provide real time engagement and interventions, and novel ingestible sensors to automatically document each time a participant takes a dose of their PrEP medication.

“Dr. Chai’s work on PrEP adherence is extremely impressive,” said Eric Buffkin, president and CEO of etectRx. “He is highly deserving of the Avenir Award, and we look forward to seeing the results of this study. The use of the ID-Cap System in this study is an exciting prospect that has the potential to deliver truly insightful results.”

etectRx is a digital health company. The FDA-cleared ID-Cap System uniquely addresses the issue with adherence to (oral) medication. The accurate, flexible and simple digital pill system allows researchers, pharmacists, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies to rethink approaches to medication adherence, innovate with confidence, and accelerate patient outcomes. To learn more, visit https://etectrx.com/.