How Digital Therapeutics Is Impacting Healthcare Transformation
Oleksandr Andrieiev
Digital Health | CEO & Сo-founder at Jelvix | Powering Business Growth through Technology | My content presents the resolution to your business challenges
Today, as healthcare is rapidly digitizing, it provides more opportunities for stakeholders than ever before. The widespread adoption of intelligent medical devices, software applications, and cloud-based platforms has improved treatment and health monitoring in and out of healthcare settings.
However, healthcare still directly needs innovation. A shortage of doctors, disease outbreaks, and the need to cut supplier costs drive it to continue turning to health tech. And one of the latest trends in the industry, digital therapeutics (DTx), tries to solve these serious problems.
Jelvix is a pro in developing digital medicine solutions, and we are about to tell you about digital therapeutics and its potential for healthcare professionals, providers, and consumers.
Terminological Clarification
The term “digital” has recently been used a lot in today’s healthcare industry. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the difference between digital medicine, telehealth, digital health, and therapeutics. Despite the similarities in names, these digital health offshoots are different therapeutic practices and products. In addition, they all have clinical evidence requirements and special regulatory oversights. So, let’s dive into the details!
Digital Medicine
It is a narrower area of digital health that includes the use of technology-based products as tools to measure human health and support medical practice. Digital medicine, most times, deals with pharmaceuticals that join prescription drugs and sensors for ingestion. Hence, unlike digital health, such products often require regulatory certification.
Digital Health
It is a generic term encompassing everything – from electronic health records to wellness applications and clinically-validated therapeutic interventions that represent or improve existing personal therapies. Digital health contains other components of healthcare services and is an area of increased interest and investment.
Telehealth
This is the name for the practice of providing medical care over long distances using various technologies. Telehealth connects healthcare specialists and patients and can be part of the above practices, including digital therapy.
Digital Therapeutics
Also known as software as medicine, digital therapeutics is a new species of digital health – a set of digital tools or systems for the treatment and prevention of disease. Typically, these are software, mobile, or connected solutions, which fall into disease prevention apps, connected medical devices, and remote monitoring systems.
The digital therapeutics definition from the acclaimed non-profit organization Digital Therapeutics Alliance (DTxA) is “delivering healthcare services directly to patients through evidentiary, clinically validated software to control, prevent, and treat a broad range of diseases and disorders.”
It is necessary to differentiate digital therapeutic from digital pills, which are themselves physical, orally administered drugs (i.e., hardware) with built-in electronic circuits.
Digital therapeutic has several strengths. Firstly, it is the ability to manage lifestyle and support behavioral changes. The focus on patients’ well-being allows digital therapeutic tools to control diseases and lifestyle changes to maintain well-being and prevent disease. Digital therapeutic also provides information that we can use to improve personal care.
Secondly, many digital therapies are relatively inexpensive, making them an attractive and viable way to reduce healthcare costs. Introducing such non-invasive behavioral support methodologies is likely to become popular with patients, payers, and health care providers. Finally, they are more scalable than many traditional treatments.
Virtually every healthcare sector is ready for DTx innovation. There has been significant growth in diabetes, asthma, drug addiction, behavioral and mental health, IDS, and obesity prevention.
Digital Therapeutic Tools
These are premium software systems designed to treat specific diseases and receive permission or approval from regulatory authorities. DTx products cover a broad range of disorders and illnesses and present clinically proven results that affect the condition. In addition, they help patients contend with various diseases and conditions through health-related advice, behavioral guidelines, exercise plans, medication alerts, and more.
Although initially only the technology companies and academia showed interest in developing DTx, the possibility of using them in combination with drugs has sparked interest from large pharmaceutical companies, which have entered the DTx market through strategic partnerships with technology companies. Thus, the global digital therapy market will grow to $ 1.6 billion by 2027.
What Do Digital Therapeutics Do?
They complement and transform traditional healthcare delivery methods and allow to:
Also, digital therapeutics can provide:
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Digital Therapeutics Principles
The DTx has presented a list of ten DTx core principles that all digital therapeutic products must meet.
DTx Products Categories
Digital therapy products today can be divided into two broad categories:
While all digital therapies align with industry core principles, these products can treat, manage, or prevent disease (which could mean improved health function).
DTx use cases
As already mentioned above, DTx is a new category of digital health designed to prevent, control, and treat disease through patient behavior change and remote health monitoring. Such solutions can induce patients to stick to a diet or medication regimen. And unlike conventional health tracking apps, which often target various conditions, digital therapy mainly focuses on a particular issue. Patients access digital treatment through a variety of software applications that can:
Although DTx companies have mainly focused on behavioral and chronic conditions, some manufacturers have expanded their product range to acute conditions. For example, Click Therapeutics is already developing DTx to treat the acute coronary syndrome.
Digital Therapeutics Examples
Pear Therapeutics
The first digital therapy to receive FDA approval was reSET – an opioid addiction therapy program developed by Pear Therapeutics, a startup partnering with Sandoz. reSET is a Prescription Digital Therapeutic app that applies cognitive behavioral therapy to help patients cope with addiction.
Proteus Digital Health
The company has developed Proteus Discovery, a new system that measures the effectiveness of drug treatments, helps clinicians improve clinical outcomes and patients meet healthcare goals. It includes a vendor portal, a mobile app, and edible and wearable sensors.
Voluntis
The company built companion software for the healthcare sector, particularly for cancer, diabetes, and blood problems. As a result, Voluntis was the first digital therapy company to be listed on the stock exchange.
Propeller Health
The company’s digital platform has expanded patient adherence to treatment by up to 58%, reducing the use of emergency inhalers to 78% and reducing visits and hospitalizations for asthma and COPD to 57% and 35%, respectively.
Digital Therapeutics Benefits
It promises many benefits for physicians, healthcare providers, distributors, patients, and other stakeholders as a relatively new concept.
Patients gain access to proven technologies that are understandable, user-friendly, and improve health outcomes. In addition, they receive individual care and treatment programs, which are much more effective because of strict adherence to the therapy regimen.
Clinicians monitor the effectiveness of their treatment regimens and maintain statistics that can be useful for further adjusting the patient management plan.
Healthcare providers can monitor patients in real-time, take timely action, improve the efficiency of healthcare delivery, and reduce the demand for personal visits by remotely interacting with people with chronic conditions.
Payers cut their general medical expenses and insurance costs.
A McKinsey Consumer Health Insights study found that modern flexibility in insurance plans is an incentive for behavior change. Most said they would change their behavior – like playing more sports – to lower their insurance premiums.
If you want to learn about the major challenges facing digital therapy and how to overcome them, check out the full article on the Jelvix blog.