Karen Young

Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BD) and Biocorp are working together to use connected technology to track patient adherence with self-administered drug therapies, including biologics.

The two companies plan to couple Biocorp’s Injay technology with BD’s UltraSafe Plus Passive Needle Guard used with prefillable syringes. Biocorp’s Injay technology, which is designed to “capture and transmit injection events using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.

“It’s our goal to combine the speed, agility and start-up mindset of Biocorp with BD’s broad manufacturing capacities and global reach,” according to BD spokesperson Trey Hollern, responding via email to questions from MD+DI.

The two companies are now in the discovery phase of the agreement, Hollern wrote, later adding that BD cannot provide specifics on potential market value of the agreement at this time.

 “We first identified Biocorp through an in-depth analysis aimed at identifying companies who have technologies with the proven ability to track end-of-injection events on syringes and a strong track record of developing connected drug delivery devices. We look forward to driving synergies between our two organizations.”

NFC is a “proven and widespread technology used in multiple industries – with common applications in credit cards and mobile payments,” Hollern wrote, adding that “within healthcare, NFC is used in hospitals for patient identification and medication packaging.”

“An emerging healthcare application is in electrophysiology sensors, in which an NFC tag can store patient monitoring data collected over a period (i.e., heart rate, temperature, other physiological parameters) and be read by the physician’s smartphone to get the patients data,” Hollern wrote, adding that the global connected drug delivery market is expected to grow at double-digit growth rates over the next decade.

Hollern wrote that not all connected drug delivery solutions are NFC-based. He noted that BD views this agreement as a “key opportunity to extend NFC technology to the prefillable syringe market going forward.