Table of Contents
Introduction
Digital therapies are a type of digital health that provides therapeutic interventions directly to patients through evidence-based, clinically assessed illness management software. The phrase "digital health" encompasses all platforms and technology that offer digital solutions to improve healthcare delivery. Telehealth, mobile health, smart gadgets, wearable devices, and sensors are all examples of digital health technologies.
What Are Digital Therapeutics?
Digital therapeutics products use modern technology to ensure best practices in design, clinical support, usability, and data protection. They have been developed to increase patients' access to effective and safely administered treatments, provide medical treatments for left untreated or undertreated health conditions, extend physicians' ability to treat patients and provide medicinal properties. Solutions in multiple languages provide accurate results and information on personalized disease management.
What Are the Advantages of Digital Therapeutics?
-
Digital treatments improve and maintain long-term health results by utilizing scientifically developed technology that tracks all aspects of the therapy process and changes in patient behavior.
-
Digital therapeutic applications are well-supported by clinical and scientific evidence, making them suited for treating specific diseases/disorders like metabolic, cardiovascular, and pulmonary ailments. This is the primary distinction between these programs and other wellness apps.
-
Digital therapeutic services offer advantages over traditional therapeutic delivery methods and can replace existing ones. Mobile applications classified as digital therapeutics can help patients adhere to treatment by reminding them of medication dosages and times of ingestion.
-
Some treatment adherence apps are built around a robot that combines artificial intelligence with psychology modeling. Through talks, the robot assists patients in consistently adhering to their treatment plans.
-
Another significant advantage of digital therapeutic applications is their ability to target underserved health issues, such as chronic and neurological illnesses.
What Are the Barriers to Large-Scale Adoption of Digital Therapeutics?
Despite substantially impacting healthcare delivery, digital therapies continue to face barriers to general adoption. The key challenge is distinguishing evidence-based, clinically established digital therapeutics applications from other low-quality, unverified wellbeing apps widely available in the digital healthcare industry.
Is Digital Therapeutics Effective for Cardiovascular Disease?
-
The Digital Therapeutics Association defines DTx as a "new category of medicine that provides medical treatment directly to patients utilizing evidence-based, clinically assessed programs to treat, manage, and avoid a broad spectrum of medical conditions and problems. Because DTx solutions are marketed as therapeutic interventions, they are subject to strict FDA regulation and must be clinically verified to generate real-world good health results.
-
Digital therapeutics inspires positive lifestyle and behavior change through disease-specific programs while promoting long-term health. While simple wellness applications focus on overall health, Digital therapeutics solutions address a person's specific medical problem, such as heart failure, hypertension, coronary artery disease, etc. Depending on the individual's treatment plan, the answer may include managing a certain diet or exercise program and sleep, stress, and medicine reminders.
Digital treatments can have a substantial influence in the following ways:
-
To Promote Behavior Change: Clinical practices frequently need more time to devote to health education. With healthcare practitioners under time constraints, it is becoming increasingly challenging to integrate meaningful health education in consultations. DTx solutions can give high-quality health education to patients whenever they need it. Education is offered in bite-sized, consumable formats that patients can access conveniently. Traditional therapeutic approaches promote lifestyle modifications, assuming people will do the right thing if they know what to do. However, this is only sometimes true. For example, one study found that, despite being aware of the need for healthy eating, individuals regularly reported difficulty adhering to a healthy diet.
-
To Increase Drug Adherence: Many CVD prescriptions are compounded by polypharmacy, complex dosage, and numerous medication administration directions. To emphasize this point, individuals with heart failure frequently need to take an average of 6.8 drugs and 10.1 dosages per day. Some people may need help to stick to this schedule, but DTx can make it easier by providing in-app medication reminders.
What Are the Eight Essential Components of Powerful Digital Therapeutics Solutions?
Strong digital therapeutics solutions often include most or all of the following eight components:
-
Regular Monitoring, Measurement, and Feedback from Connected Medical Devices: Smart inhalers for respiratory problems and continuous glucose monitoring for diabetes can be used to nudge and notify patients if their readings are out of range.
-
Keep Payers and Providers Informed: When patients give insurance companies, caregivers, and employers access to their vital statistics, they might be rewarded for their efforts to stabilize or improve chronic health conditions.
-
Individualized Coaching and Support: Patients can work with professional coaches to develop a personalized diet and fitness plan based on their chronic conditions.
-
Behavior Modification Using Gamification: Gamified challenges and incentives can be used in digital therapeutics systems to track and motivate people to follow prescribed diets, lifestyle routines, and drugs.
-
Developing a Thriving Community: An active virtual patient community can improve adherence by pushing and motivating patients to meet their health objectives.
-
Health Mall: Healthcare leaders feel patients interacting with digital health ecosystems prefer an integrated journey over point experiences or solutions.
-
Patient Education: Digital education resources can provide patients and their families with information about disease conditions, treatment alternatives, diet, and healthy living choices.
-
Advanced Analytics Can Help Predict and Avoid Health Events: One may advise on whether to take preventative measures or when lifestyle and behavioral adjustments could help to avoid negative outcomes.
Conclusion
Digital health technologies have already influenced healthcare delivery and will continue to change hypertension illness management. Adoption of technical advancements, including wearable devices, health apps, and other digital solutions, can help speed up procedures that require big data and data analytics, resulting in new approaches to patient management and increased possibility for individualized care. Despite previous technological advances, more work is required to fully realize the benefits of digital solutions in hypertension management and ensure that these approaches do not create a digital divide between high and low-income groups and those with and without access to technology.
