Clinical trials remain the foundation of evidence generation in the healthcare industry. They answer whether treatment works under controlled conditions, but they rarely show how people experience their treatment once they leave the clinic.
In allergic rhinitis, symptoms can fluctuate everyday with pollen exposure, weather, lifestyle and individual behavior. Treatments are sometimes combined, switched or discontinued, and symptoms can affect work, sleep, concentration, and quality of life in ways that are difficult to capture during a traditional study.
For pharmaceutical companies, one biggest unanswered question is “How is my therapy performing in routine care?”. Digital companion apps provide an opportunity to observe how people manage allergic rhinitis between clinical visits. Because patients regularly track symptoms, treatments, and environmental triggers, these platforms can generate longitudinal real-world evidence that complements traditional clinical studies, helping researchers to better understand the real-life of people and opportunities for business. By contextualizing the patient experience, we can have more clue on their treatment in daily life, helping answer key questions such as:
Understanding the treatment pathways provides valuable context to life sciences companies. The role of real-world data is to determine whether treatments work within the daily routine and life of people. Medical Affairs, Clinical Development, Commercial and Brand teams can leverage those inputs when evaluating the current impact of a therapy or planning future strategies.
For example, within Allergy Buddy, the symptom tracker module highlights that many patients continue experiencing a significant burden despite treatment. Runny nose, itchy symptoms, stuffy nose, watery/red eyes, and sneezing remain commonly reported by users, suggesting that people still experience nasal and ocular burden.
Those types of insights aim to demonstrate areas where burden may persist and can complement clinical endpoints by showing how symptoms affect sleep, work, concentration, outdoor activity, and quality of life over time.
Two patients receiving the same allergic treatment may experience completely different outcomes depending on factors such as:
Taken together, symptom patterns and treatment behaviors help reveal how burden differs from one patient to another, bringing us even closer to personalized medicine.
By tracking symptoms, treatment usage, environmental exposure, and quality-of-life impact over time, Allergy Buddy connects these data points to provide a more complete picture of each patient and identify distinct subgroups with different needs. It also helps identify patients living with comorbidities, such as asthma or chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP), and highlights how these conditions may interact with their allergy symptoms and treatment.
This is where real-world data becomes valuable: when it links clinical questions with the daily concerns that matter most to people.
Allergic rhinitis is a variable and context-dependent disease, so capturing real-world data can help reveal individual health patterns and burden that traditional studies may miss. As digital health adoption continues to grow, combining patient generated data with clinical evidence will support drug manufacturers in better understanding treatment performance and unmet needs to develop more personalized and patient centered initiatives.
Allergy Buddy, developed by Aptar Digital Health, is a digital companion for adults actively managing their allergies. With 74.3% of users aged between 25 and 64 years, it helps people track daily pollen allergy symptoms, monitor pollen levels, and access personalized guidance for managing allergic rhinitis and pollen allergies.
By using Allergy Buddy, users generate continuous real-world evidence that allows to understand their overall experience.
