Akili Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 11, 2023

Key Takeaways

  • In Q1, pediatric EndeavorRx sales metrics showed strong sequential growth, with a 38% increase in new prescriptions and a 15% rise in unique prescribers versus Q4 2022.
  • Akili submitted its regulatory package to the FDA to expand the indication to adolescents aged 13–17, a milestone hit well ahead of schedule that could double the addressable market.
  • Top-line results from the adult ADHD trial were “astounding,” with effect sizes over twice those seen in adolescents and nearly seven times those in children, including 1/3 of adults scoring in the normative range post-treatment.
  • EndeavorRx was added to several payer formularies (including Kroger Health), but families still pay 94% of dispensed prescriptions out-of-pocket while broader reimbursement pathways develop.
  • With Q1 revenues of $0.1 million, non-GAAP operating expenses of $14 million, and $117 million cash on hand, Akili expects funding to support operations into Q1 2025.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Akili Q1 2023
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Akili, Inc. first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on May 11, 2023. I will now turn the call over to Julie DiCarlo, Senior Vice President of Communications. Please go ahead.

Julie DiCarlo
Julie DiCarlo
SVP of Communications at Akili, Inc

Good afternoon, thank you for joining us today for Akili's earnings conference call for the first quarter of 2023. This is Julie DiCarlo, and I'm joined today by Akili's CEO, Eddie Martucci, our President and Chief Operating Officer, Matt Franklin, our Chief Medical Officer, Scott Kollins, and our Chief Financial Officer, Santosh Shanbhag. After the markets closed today, we issued our earnings release, which can be accessed on the Investor Relations section of our website. Additionally, we posted earnings slides on our IR website that we'll reference during today's webcast. This call is being recorded, and a replay of the teleconference will be available on our IR website at the conclusion of today's event. During today's call, we'll make forward-looking statements regarding future events, expectations, plans, prospects, or the financial performance of the company.

Julie DiCarlo
Julie DiCarlo
SVP of Communications at Akili, Inc

These forward-looking statements are based upon estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the company's management, involve certain risks and uncertainties. The company's actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by any such forward-looking statement as a result of various important factors. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, those risks and uncertainties set forth in our Form 10-K filed on March 9th, as well as other subsequent filings with the SEC. Information provided on today's call reflects our views only as of today, May 11th, and should not be relied upon as representative of our views as of any subsequent date. We explicitly disclaim any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements or our outlook. Also, during today's call, we'll refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures.

Julie DiCarlo
Julie DiCarlo
SVP of Communications at Akili, Inc

Management does not intend the presentation of these non-GAAP financial measures to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP, but as a complement to provide greater transparency. A reconciliation of the historic non-GAAP financial measures to our GAAP financial measures is included in our earnings slides and in our earnings release. If you're following along with the slides, please turn to Slide 4 as I hand the call over to Eddie for his prepared remarks. Eddie?

Eddie Martucci
Eddie Martucci
CEO at Akili, Inc

Thanks, Julie. Welcome to our Q1 2023 earnings call. We've been busy. We had a productive first quarter growing EndeavorRx in the pediatric market. Positioning ourselves to be able to access the even larger adolescent and adult ADHD markets. I'm excited to share our progress today and tell you more about some of our recent announcements. In terms of EndeavorRx in children with ADHD, we're seeing strong results. In the second quarter of launch with our targeted sales force, we saw an increase over Q4 in essentially every sales metric. Especially positive for us is a return to quarterly growth in both new prescribers and new prescriptions, which shows that we're demonstrating increasing control in the model. We're seeing more traction overall. That more doctors are integrating EndeavorRx into their routine practice.

Eddie Martucci
Eddie Martucci
CEO at Akili, Inc

Matt's done a great job leading the team to balance breadth of new prescriber uptake with depth in existing prescribers, showing that both of these can be growth areas for us going forward. As we look to expand the number of addressable patients, our team prioritized and moved quickly on our adolescent regulatory package, which I'm happy to report is now submitted to the FDA. We've hit that important milestone well ahead of what we had originally anticipated. This is excellent for our business as doctors who see our current patients in children 8 to 12 years old also see adolescent patients, which means with approval, we should be able to quickly and easily access this larger pool of patients. It's really important for these adolescent patients who are struggling right now.

Eddie Martucci
Eddie Martucci
CEO at Akili, Inc

While we can't speak for FDA's review process, obviously, we're definitely hopeful that the agency will recognize the urgent need in teens and that we can move quickly to market authorization, and that would double our current addressable market faster than we initially anticipated. What I'm most excited about right now is the top-line data we released last week from our adult ADHD trial. While we've previously shown in published randomized controlled trials that the SSME technology inside EndeavorRx can treat cognitive dysfunction in adults with depression and MS, we hadn't explicitly completed a clinical trial in adults with ADHD. Scott will go over the data from this pivotal trial in a bit, but quite frankly, I could say the results are astounding. I've been in this field for more than a decade, and the magnitude of these effects even surprised me.

Eddie Martucci
Eddie Martucci
CEO at Akili, Inc

Given a historic undertreatment of adults for their ADHD and their current struggle getting access to treatment, we think we can offer a meaningful treatment option in what is a fast-growing mental health demographic. The adult market is unique from children and adolescents. We're currently looking at options to speed our ability to get this product into the hands of patients. All in all, our pediatric market, plus adolescents and adults, could allow access to at least 14 million patients in the U.S., which is a huge jump from our current market today and helps de-risk our label expansion plans. Before we dive into the earnings details on all of these items, I'd like to quickly address the questions that I know are out there about the health of the digital therapeutic industry.

Eddie Martucci
Eddie Martucci
CEO at Akili, Inc

What I'd like to say is that as with all areas of medicine, we know that not all products are created equal. The potential for success really comes down to specifics like the product mechanism, the clinical data, the market the product is entering. All three of these for Akili are very different than many other digital therapeutics and give us a unique opportunity to scale like other established areas of medicine.

Eddie Martucci
Eddie Martucci
CEO at Akili, Inc

Our technology is the medicine that's directly stimulating physiology, not just a mechanism to deliver human therapy in an app. We've seen recently in adults that this can have dramatic clinical impacts. Our market is unique. Our adult ADHD market generally, and our future mental health markets are broad, they're large, and they're comprised of activated patients who are hungry for new therapeutics. We think that's why we see a willingness to pay out of pocket, and already about 10,000 prescriptions written primarily by general practice pediatricians and specialty psychiatrists in every state in the country. These are the things that give me confidence that our products have the ability to grow and scale, and we're well-funded into Q1 2025 to do so.

Eddie Martucci
Eddie Martucci
CEO at Akili, Inc

Now to dig into the data from this last quarter and our plans going forward, I'd like to turn it over to Matt and team. Matt?

Matt Franklin
Matt Franklin
President and COO at Akili, Inc

All right. Thanks, Eddie. We've previously outlined three strategic areas of focus for our business, and these are outlined on Slide 5. The first is driving awareness and adoption of EndeavorRx through the addition of our direct sales force, now in 25 priority territories, covering roughly 40% of the estimated U.S. market opportunity for our initial indication of EndeavorRx. The second is removing barriers to adoption by driving expanded coverage for EndeavorRx, and third, continually improving our treatment experience. In the first quarter, we continued to grow adoption, released several new features to improve the treatment experience, and made modest progress with payers. Let's look at the highlights from each of these areas, starting with adoption. In the first quarter, we deployed the second wave of our sales team to 12 additional geographic territories, bringing us up to a total of 25 occupied territories.

Matt Franklin
Matt Franklin
President and COO at Akili, Inc

While it's very early, we are encouraged by the initial progress we've seen in these expansion territories. In Q1, we saw double-digit growth compared to Q4 2022 in nearly all measures of demand. The overall number of prescribers, new prescribers, overall prescription growth, new prescriptions, and refill prescriptions. We are encouraged to see the number of new prescribers as well as repeat prescribers grow. In short, we continued to see strong correlation between direct sales engagement and accelerated growth across key adoption performance metrics. Moving now to coverage. In Q1, we added to our payer coverage, but not as quickly as we added new prescribers and prescriptions. We also continue to see families willing to pay out of pocket for EndeavorRx, and while this is encouraging, we acknowledge that families need expanded access to new non-pharmaceutical treatment options.

Matt Franklin
Matt Franklin
President and COO at Akili, Inc

We did make progress in Q1 as EndeavorRx was added to multiple formularies. Of note, Kroger, one of the largest and most innovative retailers in the U.S., is now covering EndeavorRx for its more than 400,000 employees, plus the estimated 6 million affiliated Kroger Health plan members. Of course, formulary inclusion is just the first step in a multi-step reimbursement process, we're encouraged by the progress. Finally, on treatment experience, we continue to update and optimize the treatment experience surrounding the product, including our companion application for caregivers, EndeavorRx Insight. In Q1, our enhancements were focused on improving progress tracking features to provide caregivers and healthcare providers increased visibility into the benefits patients are realizing from EndeavorRx and to track this progress throughout their treatment.

Matt Franklin
Matt Franklin
President and COO at Akili, Inc

An important update I'd like to highlight: we've added the ability within EndeavorRx Insight app for caregivers to complete the Vanderbilt assessment, a standardized rating scale commonly used by providers to diagnose and assess ADHD. This is now live and being used by caregivers. This is a critical addition that both HCPs and caregivers have asked for and provides a way to systematically monitor improvement during the course of treatment. Turning now to the numbers. The full slate of quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year metrics are on Slide 6. I'll highlight a few of the key metrics, starting with prescriptions. As Eddie mentioned, we saw robust growth in number of new prescriptions, with a 38% increase over Q4 2022 and a more than 190% increase over Q1 2022.

Matt Franklin
Matt Franklin
President and COO at Akili, Inc

On refills, we continue to see positive trends in prescription refills, reporting 23% quarter-over-quarter and more than 400% year-over-year growth. On prescribers, in Q1, we saw more than 900 unique prescribers write prescriptions, a 15% increase over Q4 2022, with new prescribers growing by 20% in the same time period. 35% of the new prescriptions written in Q1 were dispensed during the quarter, down from 40% in Q4. We believe the small decline was driven by the significant increase in number of prescriptions written in late March, which we expect to be filled in Q2.

Matt Franklin
Matt Franklin
President and COO at Akili, Inc

The number of annual prescriptions per patient, a new metric we are providing that encompasses both new prescriptions and refill prescriptions that are dispensed for each patient in the prior 12 months, was 1.7, a 17% increase over Q4 2022. During Q1, we received payment for 95% of dispensed prescriptions. 94% of dispensed prescriptions were paid out of pocket by caregivers, 1% were reimbursed, 5% were provided free of charge to qualifying families under our patient assistance program. I'll turn it over to Dr. Scott Kollins, our Chief Medical Officer, who will provide an update on our clinical programs.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

Thanks, Matt. As you've already heard, we've had a number of exciting updates from our clinical programs. First and foremost, as Eddie mentioned, we recently disclosed top-line results from our clinical trial in adults with ADHD. The findings are highlighted on Slide 7 and were even better than we had hoped. We saw changes on our primary outcome measure of attentional functioning improve significantly from baseline to the end of treatment. The magnitude of change seen in adults was more than twice as large as what we saw in our recent adolescent study and was nearly 7x greater than what we observed in our initial RCT in children aged 8 to 12 that led to the FDA's authorization of EndeavorRx.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

On the same validated measure of attention, more than a third of patients scored in the normative range at the end of treatment, meaning they no longer had a measurable attention deficit after using our treatment for six weeks. In comparison, in our pediatric population, where we have FDA authorization, 11% of patients scored in the normative range at the end of treatment. We also observed significant effects on clinically meaningful outcome measures, including the inattention subscale and the total score of the ADHD Rating Scale, a widely accepted measure of ADHD symptoms. Nearly one-third of all patients had a clinically meaningful improvement of 30% or more on the ADHD Rating Scale. These are also greater than what was seen in both of our pediatric and adolescent studies.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

Critically important from a clinical perspective, for the first time in our ADHD studies, we measured quality of life in this adult study with a validated ADHD specific measure. We saw robust improvements with almost half of all participants meeting the pre-specified criterion for clinically significant quality of life improvement. We plan to present full data from the STARS-ADHD adult study at a future scientific meeting. These findings could have significant implications for the millions of adults living with ADHD in the United States. Over the past several months, we've seen near constant reporting on both the increasing numbers of adults seeking care for ADHD, as well as the barriers they're facing accessing that care.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

This environment makes it even more important that we get our product into patients' hands as quickly as possible, and we're currently evaluating regulatory strategies that will speed delivery of this effective and safe treatment to patients. We'll look forward to sharing more information about our plans in this regard soon. In addition to these adult study results, which truly exceeded our expectations, we reached another important milestone on the path to access the full ADHD population. Earlier this week, we submitted our label expansion request to the FDA to expand our EndeavorRx indication to children aged 13 to 17. This milestone, along with the completion of the adult study I just described, are both well ahead of schedule from what we initially projected. As we shared in January, we showed robust improvements in attentional functioning and related clinical outcomes in adolescents.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

The mental health crisis has hit teenagers hard. They too are impacted by difficulties accessing treatment. It's critical for teens to have as many choices as possible to manage their ADHD functioning, and we look forward to being able to give them a new option with EndeavorRx. With respect to our other programs, our pipeline can be found on Slide 8. Our Phase 3 study in partnership with Shionogi in Japan, as well as our two other studies of cognitive dysfunction following COVID infection, are on track with timelines we previously reported. In summary, our progress toward expanding our opportunity in the ADHD market is accelerating. Outcomes from our pivotal study in adults were better than expected. Our pivotal trial results in adolescents have been submitted to FDA to expand our existing label, and our pivotal trial in Japan is on track for an end-of-year readout.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

We're excited about this potential to benefit a substantially greater number of patients across their lifespan, and we'll be working hard to help ensure access to this treatment option in the midst of ongoing challenges for patients with ADHD. I'll now turn it over to Santosh for an update on our financials.

Santosh Shanbhag
Santosh Shanbhag
CFO at Akili, Inc

Thank you, Scott, and hello, everyone. As you just heard from Scott, we have made incredible progress to address the vast majority of ADHD patient populations here in the United States. You can see on slide number nine, we have updated the overall opportunity across ADHD to at least 15 million people here in the U.S. With the imminent launch of our adult product, we undertook a reappraisal of the market opportunity with the expertise of Dr. Kollins and have updated our estimates for the total addressable market in adult ADHD. With strong data in both the adolescent and adult ADHD populations in this quarter, our label expansion combined with our current population has the potential to reach more than 14 million people with ADHD. We are advancing these programs well ahead of schedule and helping de-risk our label expansion plans.

Santosh Shanbhag
Santosh Shanbhag
CFO at Akili, Inc

On to the financials on Slide 10. From a revenue perspective, as you see on the slide, in the first quarter of 2023, total revenues were $113,000. It is similar to our revenues reported in the fourth quarter of 2022. As a reminder, we recognize revenue upon dispense and activation and over a 30-day period. You will therefore notice that our deferred revenue balance increased compared to the fourth quarter of 2022 in our financial statements in the press release today. This was mainly due to the timing of prescriptions dispensed in the quarter. Moving on to expenses. We incurred approximately $19 million of GAAP total operating expenses and about $14 million of non-GAAP total operating expenses in the first quarter of 2023, which represents approximately 30% reduction quarter-over-quarter.

Santosh Shanbhag
Santosh Shanbhag
CFO at Akili, Inc

This was primarily driven by the impact of the actions taken earlier in the quarter in the support of our 2023 operating plan, including the reduction in our workforce. Last but not the least, from a capital perspective, we ended the first quarter of 2023 with approximately $117 million of cash equivalents, and short-term investments. This brings me to our cash runway. We continue to expect that our cash position at the end of the first quarter of approximately $117 million to be able to fund our current and planned operations into the first quarter of 2025. I'll close on the financial update by reiterating that our current operating plan allows us to, one, focus our resources primarily on EndeavorRx commercialization and ADHD label expansion. Two, preserve capital, especially in these current capital market conditions.

Santosh Shanbhag
Santosh Shanbhag
CFO at Akili, Inc

With that, I'll hand it over to Eddie. Eddie?

Eddie Martucci
Eddie Martucci
CEO at Akili, Inc

Thanks, Santosh. I hope everyone can sense the things we're excited about here on today's call. On Slide 11, we just have a quick summary for you all. EndeavorRx's strong sales metrics, along with our successful clinical trials in adolescents and adults, have significantly strengthened our position and has de-risked our plans to access the entire ADHD market. We're well-funded into Q1 of 2025 to pursue our goals and advance our growth. I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. We look forward to keeping you apprised of our progress. At this time, I'd like to turn things back over to our operator, who will open the call to questions.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct a question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press star followed by the Number 1 on your touch tone phone. You will hear a one-tone prompt acknowledging your request. Your first question comes from the line of Charles Rhyee from TD Cowen. Your line is now open.

Charles Rhyee
Charles Rhyee
Managing Director at TD Cowen

Hi, this is Lucas on for Charles. Want to ask about the adult data. Curious as to why you guys are seeing such improved results in adult patient populations compared to pediatric and adolescents. You commented a little bit on the last call, like to hear if you guys have chance to come to some more concrete solutions as to why adult populations seem to have better outcomes than younger populations.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

Yeah, this is Scott. I'll take that. Thanks for the question. Yeah, as we talked a little bit about this following the report of the adolescent data. I actually think some of our hypotheses were confirmed with the adult data. These are patients who are they are taking control of their own treatment. They're we think that they're likely to be more motivated. An adult who's enrolling in a clinical trial is seeking care because their current treatment options aren't working, which is a different scenario than a 10 or 11-year-old being enrolled into a clinical trial by their caregiver. We are we're interested in exploring sort of more quantitatively and objectively how we might confirm that hypothesis.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

From everything we've seen in the data, that's our best guess right now.

Charles Rhyee
Charles Rhyee
Managing Director at TD Cowen

Okay, great. Can you remind us what the timeline for approval of the label expansion is, assuming it's shorter than a 510(k)? Obviously pending approval, how quickly will you guys be able to launch the adult version of the product? You know, kind of working on the assumption that you'll be selling into different physician types. Yeah.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

Yeah. For our adolescent submission that we just had earlier this week, that is, that's a standard label expansion. You know, the guidance from FDA is 90 days. That doesn't include opportunities for us to respond to questions that they might have. Of course, they're not legally bound to that timeline. We can't predict what the FDA is gonna do. With respect to the adult data, we are still evaluating our regulatory strategies for that, and we'll have more information later.

Charles Rhyee
Charles Rhyee
Managing Director at TD Cowen

All right. Thanks for the question.

Operator

As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from the line of Judah Frommer from Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Judah Frommer
Judah Frommer
Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Credit Suisse

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking the question, guys, and congrats on the progress. Maybe first, could you just remind us how standard of care for ADHD compares in adults versus adolescents and how those sales calls could potentially be different between the two physician and patient communities?

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

I can take the first part. There's a couple of pieces there. How standard of care compares between adults and adolescents and kids. As I alluded to in my comments, a lot of what has been reported on is, I think one article even referred to the treatment of adult ADHD as the Wild West because it's not as well established. Pediatricians manage the vast majority of pediatric ADHD. Primary care docs who take care of adults are not trained in the same way that pediatricians are to manage ADHD. There's a real gap in terms of who's able to. That I can speak to the standard of care.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

In terms of the, you know, the sales call, I'll turn it to Matt.

Matt Franklin
Matt Franklin
President and COO at Akili, Inc

Yeah. I mean, I think initial thoughts for the adolescent expansion, it fits seamlessly into our current call point. We're extremely excited to get that. I think it multiplies the opportunities we have. On the adult market, as Scott mentioned earlier, we're still looking at all the different regulatory strategies, commercial strategies. That work is still in progress today.

Eddie Martucci
Eddie Martucci
CEO at Akili, Inc

Well, this is Eddie. What I'm excited about, with what Scott mentioned in terms of the gap in care there is, because there's not a kind of standard singular treatment algorithm that is applied broadly, we believe there's a real opportunity for EndeavorRx to fit in a meaningful way, as we go forward, in terms of bringing the products to patients.

Judah Frommer
Judah Frommer
Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Credit Suisse

Okay. Got it. I think Santosh mentioned kind of taking the opportunity to recharacterize the addressable market, specifically in adults. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think you guys had talked about the entire ADHD market as being about 11 million people prior, and now it looks like there's about 11 million adults. Can you just help us with some of the analysis your KOL brought to light? Then separately, I think we'd also talked about non-stimulants being sort of a guide for where market share could head for digital therapeutics in this space. Should we think of that bar the same way for adults as we do for kids and adolescents? Thanks.

Santosh Shanbhag
Santosh Shanbhag
CFO at Akili, Inc

Oh, that's a great question. I mean, the KOL is sitting in the room, so I'm gonna hand it over to Scott. He can help us help you with that question on the market opportunity.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

Yeah. On the market opportunity, I'll say that, you know, so I came in December, and, you know, in the midst of getting the adult data, we took a hard look at our previous assumptions and we concluded that our previous estimates were, they were supported, but they were extremely conservative. We revised it based on just a fresh look at all of the available data.

Judah Frommer
Judah Frommer
Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Credit Suisse

Got it. Just non-stimulants, I guess, you know.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

Oh.

Judah Frommer
Judah Frommer
Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Credit Suisse

Serving as a guide for market share in the adult population potentially.

Santosh Shanbhag
Santosh Shanbhag
CFO at Akili, Inc

Yeah, I mean, this is Santosh here. In terms of market share and how we think about it, I think it's a little early right now, Judah. You know, we would still, we are still evaluating all our regulatory strategies, our go-to-market strategies. I think once we, once we have a point of view on that, we'll share that with you, and that will obviously inform how we think about the market share at that point in time.

Judah Frommer
Judah Frommer
Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Credit Suisse

Okay. Thanks, guys.

Santosh Shanbhag
Santosh Shanbhag
CFO at Akili, Inc

Yeah.

Judah Frommer
Judah Frommer
Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Credit Suisse

Thanks.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Rahul Rai from LifeSci Capital. Your line is now open.

Rahul Rai
Rahul Rai
Analyst at LifeSci Capital

Hey, guys. Excuse me. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Just wondering if you could kind of help us understand the refill dynamics that you're seeing. Are you seeing patients refill kind of month-over-month, or are you seeing some gap between the scripts? Also given that, you know, we have a couple quarters launched between the limited first launch and the full launch, can you maybe speak to the proportion of patients that, you know, you're starting to see refill more than once?

Matt Franklin
Matt Franklin
President and COO at Akili, Inc

Happy to address that. As we presented in sort of the key metrics, we did see continued growth quarter-over-quarter in the overall number of refills. It is interesting. One of the strengths of EndeavorRx is the flexibility that it can be incorporated into various different treatment scenarios, can really accommodate the unique needs of each child. We see a wide range in the market today or with our customers today. Some children, as you mentioned, use it every single month, others are just starting treatment. They're on their first experience with EndeavorRx. We do see the majority of the new prescriptions that are written come with refill prescriptions. We do anticipate that the refills per patient will grow over time.

Matt Franklin
Matt Franklin
President and COO at Akili, Inc

We're not providing guidance on the pace of that. It's a new metric early for us. You know, as we continue to grow, as our sales force is out engaging with clinicians, educating, we are hopeful that we'll continue to see that grow.

Rahul Rai
Rahul Rai
Analyst at LifeSci Capital

Got it. That's helpful. You know, switching over to the study, can you explain, is there any particular reason why you guys extended that treatment period for the adults from 4 weeks to 6 weeks? You know, are there any implications from there for adults in terms of how you guys are thinking about prescribing patterns or how long a script may ultimately last?

Eddie Martucci
Eddie Martucci
CEO at Akili, Inc

Sure, Rahul. This is Eddie. Thanks for the question. As we've gone into different populations, with the technology, You've seen that the most, the two most common paradigms are either four weeks or six weeks, that we've tested. This is true across different populations. We tend to work with key opinion leaders and investigators about what they think an ideal but minimal timeframe would be, to see the best benefits, at least at an early look at clinical. That's how we took the approach. We take each population differently, kind of work with the experts there. For this study, we chose the six-week treatment period.

Eddie Martucci
Eddie Martucci
CEO at Akili, Inc

We obviously don't have, you know, combinatorial studies where we look at every different possible, option that we could run. That's how we designed this study, prospectively.

Rahul Rai
Rahul Rai
Analyst at LifeSci Capital

Got it. Okay. You know, I guess in the label expansion going into the adult population, you know, do you expect that course of treatment to still be four weeks like it is with the current population, or would you look to kind of spread that out to a six-week treatment?

Eddie Martucci
Eddie Martucci
CEO at Akili, Inc

Yeah, I think again, you know, as we're evaluating all the different options, and also further diving into the data, we'll make that decision.

Rahul Rai
Rahul Rai
Analyst at LifeSci Capital

Got it. Then last one for me. I saw this morning the DEA extended, you know, the capabilities to for telemedicine prescribing controlled substances. You know, given, one, that we've seen the increasing rates of diagnosis of adult and adolescent ADHD, what are you guys expecting to see some kind of tailwind from additional patients kind of going on medications? You know, do you think there's an opportunity there for you guys as well?

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

Yeah, I mean, I can. This is Scott. I can comment, at least from a clinical perspective. I will just say that there is a pretty dramatic need, that's what you're, you know, that's what you're seeing in a lot of the popular press, starting to see it in the scientific literature in terms of rates. Patients need options. They not only are the existing options, you know, kind of historically not all that effective, now those options are being even further limited.

Matt Franklin
Matt Franklin
President and COO at Akili, Inc

Yeah. I think what you're referring to as well, Rahul, really shows that interestingly, the concern around the use of stimulant medications in society seems to be even more acute. The concern seems to be even more acute in the adult population. As we bring a non-pharmacological option into that population, we're very excited about that opportunity.

Rahul Rai
Rahul Rai
Analyst at LifeSci Capital

Got it. Appreciate the color.

Operator

As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. There are no further questions at this time. Please continue.

Scott Kollins
Scott Kollins
Chief Medical Officer at Akili, Inc

Okay, thank you so much, everyone. That wraps up the call. We will talk to you later on. Thanks for the attention. Bye-bye.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Eddie Martucci
      Eddie Martucci
      CEO
    • Julie DiCarlo
      Julie DiCarlo
      SVP of Communications
    • Matt Franklin
      Matt Franklin
      President and COO
    • Santosh Shanbhag
      Santosh Shanbhag
      CFO
    • Scott Kollins
      Scott Kollins
      Chief Medical Officer
Analysts
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