Digital Therapeutics & the Path to Healthcare Revolution

The Explosive Growth of Digital Therapeutics

The last year has seen digital therapeutics undergo a significant shift; from niche technologies unfamiliar to consumers and clinicians, to part of a larger movement within the digital health space towards a delivery model that prioritises proactive prevention, management, and treatment of medical conditions before they significantly affect patients’ lives.

The Main Benefits of Digital Therapeutics

The central premise of digital therapeutics is that they provide an alternative to traditional in-person healthcare; enabling patients with chronic conditions to manage their healthcare and self-dispense treatments at home, under the supervision of clinicians, coaches, therapists, and in some cases, artificial intelligence algorithms.

There are several advantages to this reimagining of healthcare delivery, the first being that digital therapeutics provide an unparalleled level of accessibility to healthcare services for patients who may otherwise go without, for reasons including cost, travel time and working hours, or even the total absence of services in their vicinity (for instance, for patients living in rural locations). This same principle also applies to the provision of healthcare services to vulnerable and/or housebound persons.

The Essential Role of Infrastructure

The successful deployment of digital therapeutics, however, is enormously dependent on local infrastructure. In many cases, patients require, at minimum, a smartphone and robust Internet connection to use digital therapeutics effectively and safely; requirements that may reinforce the disadvantages that prevented the patient from accessing healthcare services in the first place. In addition, deploying healthcare systems must be digitalised to a degree sufficient to support common functionalities including remote monitoring and live coaching, alongside mainstream usage of electronic health/medical records to ensure that patients’ data is utilised effectively.

Scientific Validation a Key Requirement for Deployment

The most important requirement for digital therapeutics is scientific validation, which vendors and developers can achieve in two ways:
 

It should be noted that scientific validation is not a legal requirement for digital therapeutics, however, vendors that forgo scientific validation are unlikely to find an audience for their products among key stakeholders, such as insurers and healthcare providers.