Looking back at when we first started working with Almirall, Ampersand Health was in a very different place as a business, and it’s been an incredible year of growth.
Twelve months ago, our attention was divided across several possible routes to market but today, our core offering is crystal clear. Our remote monitoring and supported self-care model enables patients to exercise greater control over their condition and over their care, giving them the confidence to live well. It alsohelps clinicians deliver more personalised, more flexible care.
Ampersand’s growth has coincided with the intense pressures and adaptations in the NHS (and other health systems) exacerbated by COVID-19. Reducing outpatient appointments and A&E visits for people with long-term conditions – some of the key outcomes of Ampersand’s digital health applications – now have a much greater and more tangible impact.
As we recover from the impact of COVID-19, I believe it is the right time for us all to embrace new approaches – as a healthcare system, as businesses, and as patients. New tools and resources, correctly adopted, will help us make care – and our experience of care – more personalised and responsive to our needs as a society.
At Ampersand Health, our mission is to light the path to sustained remission by enabling better access to knowledge, expertise and treatment; and Almirall has been a key partner for us in this endeavour. The programme has been an amazing opportunity to partner with and learn from others who share our mission to be a socially responsible business but at a completely different scale.
The accelerator programme has given us an insider’s view of the impact of the pharma industry on patient’s lives, and that’s shaped our approaches at Ampersand in a very tangible way. Almirall’s data insights, for example, have helped us make strides in our financial forecasting and understand the value of our offering. The programme works bi-directionally too – we have enjoyed sharing our startup culture with Almirall and teaching each other new ways of working.
This programme is just the start of our relationship with Almirall. We consider the team part of our extended family and we look forward to seeing more opportunities that arise from the relationships we’ve built through the Digital Garden. Inflammatory diseases have a wide spectrum and, looking to the future, we see potential to apply our remote monitoring, data collection, and communication tools to other disease areas, hence Almirall’s dermatology focus made this partnership a great strategic fit for Ampersand Health.
Nader Alaghband, Co-Founder and CEO, Ampersand Health