Position Paper Digital Therapeutics
Digital Therapeutics (DTx) are evidence-based therapeutic interventions that are driven by high quality software programs to prevent, manage, or treat a medical disorder or disease. There lie many opportunities in the integration of DTx in the current health care system. There are several ways in which the DTx can generate value and the working method differs largely between products. As the number of patients with chronic illnesses grow over time and the future global digital therapeutics market size is predicted to continue to grow, the need for pharmaceutical companies to shift their focus towards DTx increases.
An example of DTx is Peercode’s Atris tele-monitoring and coaching solution. Atris can monitor physical activity, heart rate, weight and blood pressure of patients who are at home. By doing so, it aims to improve the wellbeing and disease status of patients/users by interpreting data and sending relevant notifications to the patient and health care professional. The Atris patient app, can for example, help patients suffering from colon cancer to get in optimal physical shape in preparation of their medical procedure. By monitoring and coaching the patient at home whilst also being closely monitored by physicians and physiotherapists in the hospital, patients are able to improve their fitness safely, efficiently and effectively. In this position paper several topics around DTx are discussed, with in particular:
• How DTx generates value.
• What the main challenges are that pharma faces utilizing DTx.
• The digital solutions Dtx offers for real world problems.