The SQUEEZE project planned to start early 2023 will discover new ways to maximize the impact of prescription drugs for patients suffering from the chronic autoimmune disease Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA).

Digital healthcare tools and biomarkers play a key role in the project focused on overcoming real-life challenges of drug therapy by addressing behavioral and psychosocial aspects such as non-adherence, psychosocial burdens, perceptions, comorbidities, dosage of medicine etc.

Coordinated by the Medical University of Vienna, a consortium of 13 leading European organizations including university hospitals, research institutions and healthcare companies will conduct the 5-year project co-funded by Horizon Europe.

Affecting >3M patients in the EU and 17.6M worldwide, Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune chronic disease with massive impact on patients’ quality of life with significant socio-economic implications. "The SQUEEZE project is a great privilege to join – I guess it is fair to characterize the consortium as a partnership of the leading and most well-respected European stakeholders within Rheumatoid Arthritis. DAMAN’s role in the SQUEEZE project will focus on development, implementation and pilot testing of digital therapeutics based on our novelty in building next generation healthcare solutions with precision medicine. By the end of the project a digital therapeutic tool utilizing a recommendation engine for patients and healthcare professionals will be implemented," says Andreas Dam, CEO at DAMAN.

One of the world’s most renowned rheumatology scientists, Professor at the Medical University of Vienna and President-Elect of The European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR), Daniel Aletaha, said: "Over the past decades promising new treatments for Rheumatoid Arthritis have been introduced. When successful, the SQUEEZE project will enable us to match patient and medical treatment in a significantly more precise manner moving from a trial-and-error treatment regime to a brand-new and patient-focused innovative care model for Rheumatoid Arthritis. The SQUEEZE project has the potential to become a milestone for RA-patients as well as for precision medicine and precision health in general".