After several quarters of promising to deliver concrete progress on key digital therapeutics projects, Swedish pharmaceutical company Orexo on Thursday reported the somber news that its efforts remained stalled.
Orexo, which made almost all of its $60 million in 2022 revenues from U.S. sales of Zubsolv, a drug used to treat opioid use disorder, earned negligible income from its three software-based treatments in the first quarter of the year. On the company’s earnings call, CEO Nikolaj Sørensen attributed this to the company’s ongoing difficulty securing reimbursement for digital therapeutics.
“If the reimbursement system works, we believe there is a demand,” he said. “But right now, we don’t have an efficient system in the U.S., and that’s something we’re reflecting on how we can improve efficiencies in the organization to ensure that we are ready when we find reimbursement ways that work, but also are saving expenses [for] when that is possible.”
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