Digital Health and Add-on Connectivity for Injection Pens

Over the past decade, digital health solutions and eHealth applications have matured significantly. Diabetes care has often been at the forefront of this development, and broader implementation across therapy areas is emerging. The overall direction is clear: healthcare providers and patients increasingly rely on digital tools to support treatment management, documentation, and decision-making.

This trend is not limited to routine care. In clinical trials, the demand for accurate, reliable, and automatically captured treatment data has also increased, driven by the need for better documentation, reduced manual reporting, and improved data quality.

While digital platforms and applications continue to evolve, many injection pens remain disconnected. This has highlighted the need for smart and connected injection pen solutions capable of detecting, storing, and transferring injection-related data to digital systems.

Smart add-ons for existing injection pens, such as DUKADA Sense, represent a solid and practical approach to bridging this gap without requiring fundamental changes to the injection pen itself.

DUKADA identified the need for basic dose memory already in 2015, when the company introduced its first product, DUKADA Trio. At that time, the ambition was clear, but the available technology did not yet allow for a robust, low-power, and user-friendly solution capable of reliably storing and transferring dose data.

Since then, key technologies have matured. Improvements in sensor performance, wireless communication, and low-power electronics have reached a level where connectivity can be added to injection pens without fundamentally changing the pen or how it is used.

A critical challenge in connected drug delivery devices is not only technical feasibility, but also usability and regulatory complexity. Even small changes to pen mechanics or user workflows can significantly increase development time, validation effort, and risk — not to mention uncertain user acceptance.

Add-on approaches offer an alternative path. When designed carefully, an add-on can provide accurate dose tracking and connectivity while preserving existing pen usage, manufacturing setups, and user behaviour.

Connectivity for injection pens is often discussed in the context of diabetes. However, the underlying principles apply broadly across therapies where dose and timing are important.

For many indications, a reliable digital logbook or automatic transfer of injection data to existing platforms already represents a meaningful step forward, both for patients and healthcare providers.

DUKADA Sense is a patented, smart, connected cap designed as an add-on for injection pens. It is offered as a customisable platform to pharmaceutical companies and injection pen manufacturers who want to enhance their existing devices with connectivity.

The solution is designed to:
• accurately detect and store dose-related data
• transfer data wirelessly to connected systems
• operate with low power consumption
• preserve existing pen usage and form factor

Sustainability, usability, and design robustness are key considerations, both in hardware and system architecture.

Rather than positioning connectivity as a complete redesign of the injection pen, add-on solutions can offer a more flexible and pragmatic route. In many cases, this enables faster implementation and reduced complexity, while still supporting integration with modern digital health ecosystems

DUKADA develops customisable add-on solutions for injection pens in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies and injection pen manufacturers.

For further information, please see our contact page.