Digital therapeutics in global healthcare market

A major bar­ri­er to the wide­spread use of dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics (DTx) is the lim­i­ta­tion or lack of reim­burse­ment by pub­lic and pri­vate health insur­ance providers, says Glob­al­Da­ta, a lead­ing data and ana­lyt­ics com­pa­ny. Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics (DTx) have been defined by the Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics Alliance (DTA) as “deliv­er­ing evi­dence based ther­a­peu­tic inter­ven­tions to patients, that are dri­ven by high qual­i­ty soft­ware pro­grams to pre­vent, man­age or treat a med­ical dis­or­der or dis­ease. They are used inde­pen­dent­ly or with med­ica­tions, devices, or oth­er ther­a­pies to opti­mize patient care and health outcomes.”

“Due to increas­ing lev­els in health­care spend­ing com­bined with declin­ing R&D returns, DTx rep­re­sents a new way of treat­ment for Phar­ma com­pa­nies in which reg­u­la­to­ry approved dig­i­tal sys­tems are used to treat med­ical con­di­tions as pre­scribed ther­a­peu­tic interventions.”

Alessio Brunel­lo, Phar­ma Ana­lyst at GlobalData

GlobalData’s lat­est report, ‘Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics and Their Impact on Health­care’ reveals that there is an unmet need for patient-cen­tered care and DTx imple­men­ta­tion is designed to fill that need to deliv­er reli­able, evi­denced-based inter­ven­tions with a high con­trol of the qual­i­ty of per­son­al­ized care based on indi­vid­ual patients’ needs. More­over, DTx have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speed up clin­i­cal tri­als and cre­ate a more fit for pur­pose approach through improved recruit­ment and reten­tion of patients.

Brunel­lo con­tin­ues, “The industry’s inter­est in val­ue-based care and patient cen­tric­i­ty is help­ing dri­ve the adop­tion of DTx as insur­ers and pay­ers can use data and ana­lyt­ics to man­age health­care costs and help patients to receive appro­pri­ate treat­ment. This will dri­ve the adop­tion of DTx as health­care stake­hold­ers are plac­ing increas­ing empha­sis on cost-effec­tive­ness.” DTx can be used to pre­vent, man­age, or treat dis­eases across diverse indi­ca­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly chron­ic con­di­tions, such as dia­betes, res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases, and men­tal health con­di­tions and neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders. They are pre­scribed as monother­a­py (stand­alone) or togeth­er with oth­er ther­a­pies (adjunc­tive or add-on) or devices to opti­mize health out­comes. Brunel­lo adds, “Despite DTx tech­nolo­gies poten­tial­ly reduc­ing total health care costs, increas­ing tri­al effi­ca­cy and improv­ing patients’ health, there are a few chal­lenges to address before they become an inte­gral part of mod­ern med­i­cine, such as bet­ter align­ment between providers, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and payers.”