Prognosis healthy for 'smart' inhalers

Developer Garth Sutherland with his inhaler. Picture / Martin Sykes

A digital inhaler that helps asthmatics to manage their condition can now be bought off-the-shelf after its creator signed a deal with one of New Zealand's biggest distributors of medical devices.

Medica Pacifica will supply the Nexus6 Smartinhalers to hospitals, doctors and pharmacies throughout the country.

Nexus6 spent three years developing the product and selling small numbers directly to medical professionals and researchers. The distribution deal has given the company the channel it needs to reach the 500,000-plus New Zealanders who have asthma.

Nexus6 director Garth Sutherland said the Smartinhaler was a tool to help asthma sufferers to track their medication intake.

They use the device, fitted with a microprocessor chip, as a normal inhaler, but by plugging it into a computer they can upload data and view reports on their dosages and lung function on a private website account.

This helps to determine the optimum amount of preventive medication to take and when, and lets users know how much medication is left in the can.

The Smartinhaler can also sound an alarm reminding people to take their medication.

Seven years ago, Sutherland, a former electronics and software engineer with a masters degree in science, decided he wanted to use his skills to help relieve a big problem in New Zealand.

The country has one of the highest rates of asthma on the planet and the World Health Organisation estimates the number of sufferers will increase 45 per cent by 2025.

Sutherland, who has had asthma all his life, said research showed asthmatics tended to rely on relief inhalers and were not using their preventive medication enough.

The $100 Smartinhalers could help to get the dosages right, meaning the relief inhalers would be needed less often.

Previous asthma management programmes involved pen-and-paper records, which many people found tedious and inconvenient to update, he said.

Sutherland saw how a computer could ease that aspect of treatment and devised a way to "wrap digital technology around the medication".

He named the company after the renegade Nexus6 replicants in Ridley Scott's classic 1982 sci-fi movie Blade Runner.

Although Sutherland was not daunted by the technical side of developing the product, the business side was a challenge.

Residency in the Icehouse business incubator at Parnell since 2001 helped him to commercialise the idea, develop a business model and to attract one of the world's top asthma researchers, Professor Richard Beasley of Wellington, on to the company's medical advisory board.

The Icehouse also helped to prepare the business for investment.

About $150,000 in grants from Technology New Zealand and NZ Trade and Enterprise helped the business in the early stages.

In April, the company raised $500,000 in seed funding through business angels and venture capitalists to expand its marketing and to commercialise new products.

Sutherland is now gearing up for a second funding round.

He expects that the company will be ready to graduate from the Icehouse by the end of the year.

The move from the incubator will also mean a transition from a largely contract-based team of 14 to a more secure team.

Sutherland said New Zealand would remain an important market for the company, but exports were the key to profits.

He plans to tap the consumer market in Australia, where his company already has a partnership with CMS Alphatek to supply the research sector.

North America and Europe are also in his sights. The Smartinhaler attracted a lot of interest from those countries when Sutherland exhibited at a meeting of the US Phoracic Society in May.

The intention is to keep manufacturing and marketing local, and to sign up distribution partners round the world.