Digital Therapeutics – Reshaping the future of medicine
What is Digital Therapeutics?
With healthcare becoming digital, patients today are more empowered than ever before. As a result, digital health solutions have become the need of the hour to keep up with an increasing number of patients participating in their own treatment decisions. Digital health encompasses various platforms and systems that apply technological solutions to enhance healthcare delivery (1).
Over the last decade, the world has witnessed the explosion of digital health with the emergence of social media platforms, smartphones and mobile applications, wearable devices, cloud-based data platforms, real-world evidence studies, and the likes. As a result, general well-being and health monitoring are gradually extending from being space-bound activities restricted to hospitals and clinics to the widespread digital world through various smartphone applications (1).
The Digital Therapeutic Alliance (DTA) defines the DTx as “delivering medical interventions directly to patients using evidence-based, clinically evaluated software to treat, manage, and prevent a broad spectrum of diseases and disorders. They are used independently or in concert with medications, devices, or other therapies to optimize patient care and health outcomes.” DTx products are held to the same standards of evidence and regulatory oversight as traditional medical treatments and must demonstrate their safety, efficacy, quality, patient centricity, privacy, and ongoing clinical impact. These products should be reviewed and cleared or certified by regulatory bodies as required to support product claims of risk, efficacy and intended use (2). Best practices for DTx are related to design, clinical validation, usability, and data security (3).
