Almirall S A : has selected six digital health start-ups to join the second harvest of the Digital Garden

Almirall has selected six digital health start-ups to join the second harvest of the Digital Garden 03 December 2020

• The main goal of the accelerator program Digital Garden, powered by Almirall, is to accelerate the growth of start-ups that offer innovative technology-based services and solutions throughout the patient journey for patients with dermatological conditions
• Six start-ups have been chosen for the second cohort of this nine-month acceleration program
• The Digital Garden will provide them the opportunity of being mentored by top pharma industry experts of all specializations and program stages as well as financial incentives

Almirall, S.A. (ALM) announced the launch of the Second Harvest of the Digital Garden powered by Almirall, a dermatology digital health accelerator open to startups worldwide poised to disrupt the future of digital health and offer innovative technology-based services and solutions throughout the patient journey. The six start-ups selected by the panel of venture capital investors in the Digital Garden Pitch Competition will participate in the nine-month acceleration program in The Digital Garden.

In October, Almirall announced the launch of the second call for dermatology-focused digital health start-ups. Since then, start-ups from around the world applied to join the program via almiralldigitalgarden.com. After reviewing the applications, Almirall selected 8 companies that were invited to pitch their business models at a virtual event co-sponsored by Almirall and HealthXL. The six winning teams selected to participate in the second harvest of Digital Garden will begin a nine-month program in January at the Barcelona Health Hub.

The program participants will receive the mentorship of Almirall experts and our global network of partners, including HealthXL and other experts. The program also provides the six selected start-ups financial renumeration, which will be determined according to an individual gap analysis of each start-up and the achievement of certain milestones. In addition to being mentored by top pharma industry experts of all specializations and program stages, they will also have the chance to leverage top hospitals in Barcelona as a testbed for digital pilots (with potential access to HCPs and patients), work on Almirall projects, and access Almirall's communication and PR networks to promote their projects, among other incentives.

Almirall hopes they will graduate into venture capital funding through its network within the digital health venture capital ecosystem. The start-ups selected for the program will participate in an investor day organized by Almirall, as well as networking opportunities with venture capitalists.

'We continue reinforcing our commitment to digital innovation through the launch of the Second Harvest of the Digital Garden. We are so pleased to start working together with the six selected start-ups to tackle some of the dermatology challenges facing patients today and in the future. We are sure that this will be a mutually beneficial collaboration that will allow us to develop solutions that will directly impact medical dermatology and the patient's quality of life,' explained Francesca Wuttke, Chief Digital Officer of Almirall.

The six chosen start-ups

The six chosen start-ups that will participate in this second harvest of Digital Garden share Almirall's noble purpose of transforming the patients' world by helping them and realizing their hopes and dreams for a healthy life. All of them are focused on developing services and solutions that tackle dermatological challenges and work on solutions that can help improve pharma processes and commercial models. The Second Harvest of the Digital Garden are:

AI DERM: AIDerm is an artificial intelligence (AI) cognitive tool to empower healthcare practitioners to make a patient-centric diagnosis and management of skin cancer patients. AIDerm provides diagnostic and management recommendations for the particular individual (patient-centric) through advanced analytics and deep learning in a multi-dimensional analysis tailored to precision medicine. AIDerm is built by expert dermatologists of the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona.

Ampersand: Ampersand's digital therapeutics use behavioural science and data science to improve patients' quality of life. By providing patients practical, personalised educational content in a timely, easy to understand way, Ampersand empowers patients to make better self-care choices and to find their way to living with their conditions.

Legit: Legit Health is the digital health medical device helping dermatologists by introducing detailed and objective follow-up in the process of skin diagnosis, automatic image assessment, and semi-automating filling of dermatological scoring systems.

Patch Ai: PatchAi has developed an empathetic conversational agent that collects Patient Reported Outcomes and integrates data-points from various devices to gain insights on the health status of the patients . Its mission is to improve people's quality of Life and support pharmaceutical companies offer safer, affordable and personalised treatments. PatchAi® is a stand-alone software provided as an app to be installed on a mobile device, to be used by the patient.

Tryl: Tryl's online platform and participant-first mobile application applies consumer-grade UX, behavioral science, and real-time data to improve adherence, reduce drop-outs, and make clinical trials faster, more costefficient, and more accurate.

Vila Health: The cloud-based web app solution is based on a conversational interface and guides the user through short, targeted and very interactive conversations that provide step-by-step professional guidance and support for the specific psychosocial challenges of living with a lifelong illness. These are very pleasant and gamified interactions that naturally and flexibly become part of people's lives and ultimately form a journey towards mental well-being, despite having a physical illness.

About Almirall

Almirall is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on skin health. We collaborate with scientists and healthcare professionals to address patient's needs through science to improve their lives. Our Noble Purpose is at the core of our work: 'Transform the patients' world by helping them realize their hopes and dreams for a healthy life'. We invest in differentiated and groundbreaking medical dermatology products to bring our innovative solutions to patients in need.

The company, founded in 1943 and headquartered in Barcelona, is publically traded on the Spanish Stock Exchange and is a member of the IBEX 35 (ticker: ALM). Throughout its 77-year history, Almirall has retained a strong focus on the needs of patients. Currently, Almirall has a direct presence in 21 countries and strategic agreements in over 70, through 13 subsidiaries, with about 1,800 employees. Total revenues in 2019 were 908.4 million euros.

For more information, please visitalmirall.com