A new class of therapies known as “Digital Therapeutics” is predicting and transforming measurable outcomes for the future of medical care. It is reshaping the structure and management of treatments for a complete set of chronic diseases that adhere to medical interventions driven by software and delivered by medical devices, service, and medication, while collecting, analyzing, and applying real-world evidence and product performance data.
Digital Therapeutics, a subset of digital health, is evidence-based therapeutic interventions driven by high-quality software systems that prevent, manage, and treat a medical disorder or disease. Digital Therapeutics often employs strategies rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy.
Digital Therapeutics harness technology to supplement or potentially replace traditional clinical therapy. Various devices complement traditional treatment by helping patients manage their condition. From my experience, Digital Therapeutics tend to fall into a variety of groups, Cognitive-Behavior Therapies (CBT) that help patients change behaviors and develop coping strategies around their condition, target lifestyle issues and or a combination with existing medication or treatments, helping patients manage their therapies and focus on ensuring the therapy delivers the best outcomes possible.
One of the areas that I find most interesting is that Digital Therapeutics will augment drugs by wrap-around services and data analytics to improve overall patient outcomes.
I have found that Digital Therapeutics value is to target conditions that are poorly addressed by the healthcare system of today, such as chronic diseases or neurological disorders. In addition, the delivery of Therapeutic Treatments reduces the demands on clinicians’ time. The treatments frequently require a prescription and can target prevention or management of a range of conditions, often chronic diseases, while collecting emerging real-world evidence that demonstrate their value in clinical terms.
Today’s remote advanced technologies have provided many opportunities for healthcare organizations to enhance the overall care experience, improve the health of populations and reduce per capita healthcare costs, globally.
As a result, I have seen a reduction in the readmissions among congestive heart failure (CHF) patients in a remote-patient monitoring (RPM) where programmes drooped to 12%-14%, compared to 20%-22% for a non-RPM cohort of CHF patients.
I believe that there are many valuable opportunities for Digital Therapeutics to address the challenging health conditions from around the world. Defined standards of safety and efficacy; will evolve through the collaboration among digital innovators and payors, providers, and pharmaceutical companies; while facilitating a swifter regulatory approval enabling a meaningful solution for modern medicine.
