Merck Joins with HAPPYneuron to Add Cognitive Training Games to MSdialog

Merck Biopharma  announced it has entered into a partnership with a French subsidiary called HAPPYneuron, and now has an exclusive license to that company’s cognitive remediation training program for multiple sclerosis (MS). The program, a series of brain training games and exercises, will be made available to people needing it through Merck’s MSdialog platform.

An e-Health platform, MSdialog is a multi-tenant and cloud-based software system developed to help MS patients — and their healthcare providers — to better manage the disease. It tracks medication schedules (Rebif, or interferon beta-1a), syncs with the RebiSmart auto-injector, monitors treatment adherence and clinical data, and helps patients to chart their health status through questionnaires.

“We have a long-standing commitment to delivering therapeutic and support solutions to people living with MS,” Rehan Verjee, Merck’s chief marketing and strategy officer, said in a press release. “The platform will enhance the attractiveness of MSdialog to patients and HCPs [healthcare professionals] by seeking to address these cognitive deficit symptoms and further fostering the monitoring of the cognitive state of patients.”

HAPPYneuron, a subsidiary of SBT Group of France, created the training games to address the challenges confronting people with MS. The games, refined through 10 years of clinical data, cover a range of cognitive areas and automatically adjust skill levels to match an individual, helping to ensure ease of use.

“We are very proud that Merck chose our program,” said  Franck Tarpin-Bernard, president of HAPPYneuron. “This agreement is a strong acknowledgement of the hard work we have achieved these past years to build training programs adapted to the uniqueness of each medical condition. It reinforces our willingness to become a world leader of digital cognitive remediation.”

MSdialog is currently available in 24 countries. According to the release, the HAPPYneuron training program will initially be made available to patients using MSdialog in Brazil, Argentina, Israel, Italy, France, and the Netherlands.

More information on MSdialog is available by following this link.