Digital Therapeutics: A New Era in Healthcare

Personalization helps in target intervention and customized treatment plans, catering to an individual's specific health conditions and increasing effectiveness. Personalization enables digital therapeutics to adapt dynamically based on an individual's progress, feedback, and changing health status. Further, personalized data analytics provides valuable insights into user behaviour, preferences, and outcomes. This further enables continuous improvement of digital therapeutic interventions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered our lives as we know it. Modern industries have integrated digital technology, and the healthcare sector saw an accelerated adoption due to the pandemic. At the same time, there's an increased burden on healthcare systems, providers, pharma, and even MedTech companies. Patients are also more aware and have the authority to influence the diagnosis and treatment of their diseases. This has increased the need for effective digital therapeutic solutions for treatment and care across verticals.

Digital Therapeutics: Transforming Healthcare Delivery & Patient Outcomes

Digital Therapeutics or DTx can be understood as a patient-facing software application that helps in treating, preventing, or managing a disease and comes with proven clinical benefits. DTx is evidence-based and is driven by software for therapeutic intervention. For instance, digital therapeutics is where patient assistance and monitoring occur simultaneously while there is a live telemedicine session going on with a doctor. Numerous cases exist where patients with chronic illnesses have found access to interventions from the convenience of their homes thanks to digital therapeutics offered through mobile apps or web platforms.

Like every new technology, DTx also has its own set of challenges and difficulties, along with strategies to overcome them. Here are some examples -

Regulatory Hurdles - One of the challenges that most healthcare providers face is regulatory compliance. Digital therapeutics solutions need to be reviewed and approved by regulatory authorities in different regions and jurisdictions, according to their respective regulatory requirements. This is also based on risk levels and the intended use of the solution. For this, manufacturers and providers can collaborate with regulatory bodies, stay informed about evolving guidelines, and work towards meeting compliance standards early in the development process.

Accessibility and Scalability - Providing DTx solutions across different categories of patients is another hurdle that many OEMs face. This is particularly true when it comes to underserved populations, across a variety of economic, health, and technological disparities. Manufacturers need to support factors like language, culture, and varying levels of technological literacy while developing such solutions so they can reach a wide population.

Product Usability - This leads us to the topic of product usability and the challenges around it. It is even more evident when we need to integrate DTx solutions with existing healthcare systems and workflows. Rapid technological advancements can often make it challenging to bring about seamless integration. Designers and manufacturers need to develop interoperable solutions that can be collaborated with healthcare IT providers to ensure seamless integration into existing systems.

Cybersecurity - Data security and patient privacy are some of the other challenges that many healthcare providers face, which is more evident with digital therapeutics solutions. This includes bringing in the necessary security risk management and safety governance mechanisms in place to account for information security and risk management. Healthcare professionals need to bring in necessary certifications or accreditations, including ISO/IEC, HITRUST, SOC 2, etc., which are mandatory, along with verification of patient authentication, patient authorisation, encryption, data access, and therapy access.

Personalisation in Digital Therapeutics

Comprehensive digital therapeutics can monitor and predict the progression of a disease or disorder. It can also deliver clinical insights to the patient and/or caregiver(s) while delivering actionable clinical insights to a physician. Similarly, it can also enable remote patient monitoring. A common factor for all these applications is the need for personalisation. In fact, personalisation is key for digital therapeutics.

Personalisation helps in target intervention and customised treatment plans, catering to an individual's specific health conditions and increasing effectiveness. Personalisation enables digital therapeutics to adapt dynamically based on an individual's progress, feedback, and changing health status. Further, personalised data analytics provides valuable insights into user behaviour, preferences, and outcomes. This further enables continuous improvement of digital therapeutic interventions.

Of course, with personalisation, the question of privacy and data security also pops up. Patient privacy and consent processes are critical to the usability and safety of digital therapeutics solutions and to establishing trust. This is also where critical cybersecurity measures must be taken Into account. It's also necessary that the DTx solutions comply with applicable laws and data regulations.

Future and Beyond

The pandemic and the subsequent years have brought out a magnitude of changes in the modern healthcare segment. Here, digital therapeutics is expected to significantly influence how healthcare is delivered and consumed across the world. Digital therapeutic solutions will also alter the way pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers sell products and cater to providers, physicians, and patients.

More importantly, we are witnessing a dynamic shift to value-driven healthcare models, which are fast-tracking the adoption of technologies like digital therapeutics. With DTx, patients are witnessing hyper- personalisation and humanisation of technology, and this trend is expected to carry forward in the years to come. One can also anticipate Immersive experiences for patients, which brings collaboration across disciplines such as doctors, designers, and digital experts, among others.

Author: Ajay Sathyanarayana, Practice Head – Digital Health, Tata Elxsi