AndningMed is one of four companies that were granted funding in December from our call Competence Reinforcement in Small Businesses. Their aim is to help patients control their chronic lung disease, such as COPD and asthma, through proper inhalation technique. We contacted Petra Szeszula, PhD, who is one of the founders and the CEO of AndningMed, to congratulate and to ask what they are going to use the funding for.

Hi Petra and congratulations! What are your plans for the funding?

-Thank you, we are really happy for the support! The funding will be used to bring in experts to plan and design a bigger clinical study that will start next year.

Their product, both a device and software, emerged out of a real need that the founders discovered when they participated at the Clinical Innovation Fellowship Program, arranged by RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and EIT Health. The teams in this program use design process methods and observe doctors and nurses in their daily work at health clinics to see what they and the patients really need. The team, at the time Petra Szeszula, Annelie Hultman Araya, Essam Sharaf and Anna Melker, learned that 70-90% of all patients that use an inhaler make at least one technical error that negatively affects the effect of the medicine. Nowadays, the mechanical engineer, Christian Aguayo, has stepped in instead of Melker, and a couple of years later the team now has a prototype that is easily mounted on the outside of the patient’s inhaler and that communicates with a software in the patient’s own smartphone, smart-watch or computer.

-Every time the patients take their medicine, our device checks the inhalation technique and provides feedback by red, yellow or green lights on how well they have done it, Petra explains. For example, if the inhaler was too lightly shaken or if it wasn´t held in the correct angle when inhaling.

Their product has the potential to help a very large group of people. Globally, it is estimated that around 600 million people suffer from COPD and asthma. In Sweden alone, about 1.5 million people inhale asthma and COPD medicines regularly.

We wish Petra and the rest of the team at AndningMed the best of luck, and we will get back to you with an update on their clinical study later next year!

Read more about the call Competence Reinforcement in Small Businesses here

Read more about AndningMed here