Who are PharmaSens?
They’re a company developing three insulin pumps, which do three different things.
In their own words:
We are a privately held Swiss company, located in Biel and Neuchâtel.
We involve users early and constantly in our development. Our products are designed based on users’ preferences, wishes, and needs.
We have an expert team experienced in developing and bringing products to market for people living with diabetes.
We have strong collaborations and valuable partnerships with the medical device/pump development and manufacturing community.
We hold several granted patents, have pending applications and guaranteed freedom to operate for our technologies.
Their CEO is Michael Both, ex-of both Roche Diabetes Care, we he was responsible for manufacturing, and Disetronic, so it fair to say he has pedigree in this area.
Their products?
As mentioned, they have three pumps, and again, I’ll let their words do most of the talking. The different pumps clearly have different targets, and do the following:
- A standalone basal-bolus pump
- A connected pump with a smartphone app
- A combined pump and glucose sensor
All three pumps are based on the same chassis and look like a slightly sexier, cylindrical Omnipod.
I’d be very surprised if the three different offerings didn’t come with different price points, but I do wonder whether the market investigation and real-world use will come to show that the first two offerings make sense as differentiated items, or whether they’ll end up as a single product, given clinical requirements to extract data from pumps would suggest the onboard componentry could be similar.
Overall, they look good, but with no data on clinical trials or testing, it’s hard to say where they are in the product development cycle.
Will they make it to market?
At any point in time, there seem to be many insulin delivery devices in development. Whilst the pump/CGM offering here is unique in the market at the moment, the idea still has the concerns that have been raised many times over. How frequently do you change it and how do you make it work at a price point where this is acceptable?
They are in the tech fair at ATTD2022, so it might be worth popping along and paying them a visit to find out more.
I think the pumps look good, and having more competition in the patch pump space is a good thing, however, based on the available public data, this seems like it’s a very long way from usable product, and even further from approval. I hope I’m wrong!
Sounds interesting!