Teva Dives Headfirst Into the Wearable Tech Market, Will Develop Huntington’s Disease Device With Intel

September 15, 2016: JERUSALEM--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., (NYSE and TASE:TEVA) today announces a collaboration with Intel Corporation to develop a unique wearable device and machine learning platform for use in Huntington disease (HD). This platform will continuously monitor and analyze key symptoms that impact daily living, in an effort to better understand disease progression and improve treatment evaluation.

Teva, working in collaboration with Intel, will deploy this novel technology platform for the first time in a sub-study within the ongoing Phase 2 Open-Pride HD Study. As part of this, patients will be asked to use a smartphone and wear a smartwatch equipped with sensing technology that will continuously measure their general functioning and movement. These data will be wirelessly streamed to a cloud-based platform specifically developed by Intel to analyze data from wearable devices. Proprietary algorithms will then translate these data, in near real-time, into objective scores of motor symptom severity. The study will start towards the end of the year and will take place in centers in the US and Canada.

This collaboration will leverage Intel’s capabilities in analytics and algorithm development for movement detection, together with Teva’s deep knowledge and experience in HD treatment and research. HD is a devastating illness that is desperate for treatment options, requiring innovative ways to continuously and remotely assess and quantify symptoms in a way that can provide meaningful and actionable feedback to doctors, patients and caregivers.

“The aim of this important project is to provide continuous objective data on the impact of Huntington disease on the patient, and, by extension, a clear understanding of the impact of treatment on patients’ quality of life,” said Michael Hayden, President of Teva Global R&D and Chief Scientific Officer. “Current measurement of symptoms is largely based on observation when the patient sees the doctor. This technology now provides us with an opportunity to have continuous monitoring. This unique technology could complement future trials in HD.”

“Patients generate data based on their day-to-day experiences that can help in improving disease management — even something as simple as wearing a smart watch can add useful insight,” said Jason Waxman, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the Datacenter Solutions Group at Intel. “The complexity of analyzing these data streams requires a platform for machine learning, to help drive the pharmaceutical industry towards faster, better clinical trials, potentially leading to new treatments for patients.”

This cloud-based solution for analyzing wearable device data is being developed using the open-source Intel Trusted Analytics Platform (TAP), a software platform optimized for performance and security to accelerate the creation of advanced analytics and machine learning solutions. Initial development was done in collaboration with The Michael J. Fox Foundation for use in Parkinson’s disease research.

About Huntington disease

Huntington disease (HD) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease characterized by uncoordinated and uncontrollable movements, cognitive deterioration and behavioral and/or psychological problems. The classic onset of HD symptoms typically occurs in middle age, but the disease also manifests in children and the elderly. HD is the most common genetic cause of abnormal involuntary writhing movements called chorea. Disease progression is characterized by a gradual decline in motor control, cognition and mental stability and generally results in death within 15-25 years of clinical diagnosis.

HD is a genetic disease, passed from parent to child through a gene mutation. Each child of an HD parent has a 50-50 chance of inheriting the HD gene. If a child does not inherit the HD gene, he or she will not develop the disease and cannot pass it to subsequent generations. A person who inherits the HD gene will sooner or later develop the disease. According to the World Health Organization, Huntington disease affects about five to seven people per 100,000 in Western countries.

About Teva

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE and TASE: TEVA) is a leading global pharmaceutical company that delivers high-quality, patient-centric healthcare solutions to millions of patients every day. Headquartered in Israel, Teva is the world’s largest generic medicines producer, leveraging its portfolio of more than 1,800 molecules to produce a wide range of generic products in nearly every therapeutic area. In specialty medicines, Teva has a world-leading position in innovative treatments for disorders of the central nervous system, including pain, as well as a strong portfolio of respiratory products. Teva integrates its generics and specialty capabilities in its global research and development division to create new ways of addressing unmet patient needs by combining drug development capabilities with devices, services and technologies. Teva’s net revenues in 2015 amounted to $19.7 billion. For more information, visit www.tevapharm.com.

Teva’s Safe Harbor Statement under the U. S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:

This release contains forward-looking statements, which are based on management’s current beliefs and expectations and involve a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause our future results, performance or achievements to differ significantly from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include risks relating to: our ability to develop and commercialize additional pharmaceutical products; competition for our specialty products, especially Copaxone® (which faces competition from orally-administered alternatives and a generic version); our ability to integrate Allergan plc’s worldwide generic pharmaceuticals business (“Actavis Generics”) and to realize the anticipated benefits of the acquisition (and the timing of realizing such benefits); the fact that following the consummation of the Actavis Generics acquisition, we are dependent to a much larger extent than previously on our generic pharmaceutical business; potential restrictions on our ability to engage in additional transactions or incur additional indebtedness as a result of the substantial amount of debt incurred to finance the Actavis Generics acquisition; the fact that for a period of time following the Actavis Generics acquisition, we will have significantly less cash on hand than previously, which could adversely affect our ability to grow; the possibility of material fines, penalties and other sanctions and other adverse consequences arising out of our ongoing FCPA investigations and related matters; our ability to achieve expected results from investments in our pipeline of specialty and other products; our ability to identify and successfully bid for suitable acquisition targets or licensing opportunities, or to consummate and integrate acquisitions; the extent to which any manufacturing or quality control problems damage our reputation for quality production and require costly remediation; increased government scrutiny in both the U.S. and Europe of our patent settlement agreements; our exposure to currency fluctuations and restrictions as well as credit risks; the effectiveness of our patents, confidentiality agreements and other measures to protect the intellectual property rights of our specialty medicines; the effects of reforms in healthcare regulation and pharmaceutical pricing, reimbursement and coverage; competition for our generic products, both from other pharmaceutical companies and as a result of increased governmental pricing pressures; governmental investigations into sales and marketing practices, particularly for our specialty pharmaceutical products; adverse effects of political or economic instability, major hostilities or acts of terrorism on our significant worldwide operations; interruptions in our supply chain or problems with internal or third-party information technology systems that adversely affect our complex manufacturing processes; significant disruptions of our information technology systems or breaches of our data security; competition for our specialty pharmaceutical businesses from companies with greater resources and capabilities; the impact of continuing consolidation of our distributors and customers; decreased opportunities to obtain U.S. market exclusivity for significant new generic products; potential liability in the U.S., Europe and other markets for sales of generic products prior to a final resolution of outstanding patent litigation; our potential exposure to product liability claims that are not covered by insurance; any failure to recruit or retain key personnel, or to attract additional executive and managerial talent; any failures to comply with complex Medicare and Medicaid reporting and payment obligations; significant impairment charges relating to intangible assets, goodwill and property, plant and equipment; the effects of increased leverage and our resulting reliance on access to the capital markets; potentially significant increases in tax liabilities; the effect on our overall effective tax rate of the termination or expiration of governmental programs or tax benefits, or of a change in our business; variations in patent laws that may adversely affect our ability to manufacture our products in the most efficient manner; environmental risks; and other factors that are discussed in our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2015 and in our other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and we assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements or other information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.