The Future of Digital Therapeutics: Prescribing Apps Or Sensors A Reality?

Digital health, digital pills, digital therapeutics… With the ‘digital’ suffix being increasingly used in the digital health industry, the meaning behind some terms might not be so evident at a glance. For instance, one might think that ‘digital therapeutics’ and ‘digital pills’ are interchangeable terms; but they are in fact totally different digital health tools. While we discussed digital pills in depth last year, we have yet to talk about digital therapeutics. And this is exactly what we have set out to do with this article; as the latter might very well be a viable option in your future treatment. What is digital therapeutics? The Digital Therapeutics Alliance, a non-profit engaged in the evidence-driven advancement of digital therapeutics, even considers the term as a “new category of medicine”. The organisation further explains that digital therapeutics (DTx) “deliver medical interventions directly to patients using evidence-based, clinically evaluated software to treat, manage, and prevent a broad spectrum of diseases and disorders.” Source: https://www.htworld.co.uk/ Particularly important in this definition is that digital therapeutics are evidence-based, clinically evaluated software. This demarcates them from digital pills, which are themselves physical, ingestible medications (i.e. hardware) with embedded electronic circuits. However, while DTx are software-based, they are subject to the same regulatory oversight t...
Source: The Medical Futurist - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Forecast Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Digital Health Research Future of Medicine Future of Pharma Medical Education Security & Privacy Telemedicine & Smartphones cybersecurity apps applications treatment health management Source Type: blogs