Icelandic-Canadian biotech Prescriby has raised €2M for its treatment management platform for addictive medication.

The Prescriby app helps patients taper down their addictive medication using tapering plans, which are created by clinicians and then released via the app allowing both parties to monitor the patient’s progress remotely.

Through a partnership with the Icelandic Ministry of Health, Prescriby has begun their nationwide implementation project in Iceland, entered into a commercialization project in Canada, and is beginning a controlled cohort clinical trial in Denmark later this year. 

The current round will focus on scaling within Canada as well as introducing Prescriby to the US market as a clinical decision support tool for prescription opioids and other addictive medications.

The round is led by Crowberry Capital, a Nordic VC fund and also involves investors from Canada, Denmark and Iceland.

Dr. Kjartan Thorsson, Prescriby’s CEO and co-founder, has domain expertise in prescription opioids having been involved in prescribing and managing post-operative patients while practising medicine at the University Hospital of Iceland, where the idea was originally created.

“I was discharging around 30 patients on prescription opioids every week where you can estimate that one out of ten patients will develop some level of addiction,” he said said. 

“It became clear to me after some research and outreach to colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, that prescribers lacked tools and resources to be able to provide safer treatments from the first prescription as well as tapering long-term users. We should be focusing on making the treatments that are already being provided safer if we’re being serious about reducing the harm from the opioid crisis.

“With Fentanyl now having taken over Oxycontin as the most used illicit opioid and multiplying the harm to those who have developed addiction, we should do everything we can to provide early intervention and prevent people from ending up with addiction.”