Exploring digital therapeutics: The next paradigm of modern health-care industry

Abstract

In this era of 21 st century, the most valuable resource is data. Digital technology can generate terabytes of data which has a tremendous potential in the modern-day world. Pharmaceuticals play an essential role in improving and maintaining the health of patients. However, their cost in health-care budget is a major issue. Due to high prevalence and unfavorable consequences, managing chronic and lifestyle disorders has now become areas of major clinical concern globally. Harnessing this digital technology in our overburdened health-care industry can improve the treatment outcome and even replace the existing treatment. Health authorities such as U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) are also acknowledging their potential. FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health has established the “Digital Health Program” which seeks to promote public health and provide continued regulatory clarity by enhancing outreach to digital health customers and developing and implementing regulatory strategies and policies for digital health technologies. The main focus of this article is to give an overview of digital therapeutics (DT), its clinical applications, role of regulators, and challenges ahead along with potential areas for developers and to present an update on major developments and initiatives taken in this field. The most important advantages of DT are that it has direct access to patients, decreases cost of treatment, encourages healthy lifestyle modifications, and can substitute or complement conventional treatments. Many of these models are still in infancy stage, and further research and development is needed to demonstrate their enormous potential in near future. If used judiciously, they can modernize our health-care industry.

Open label randomized controlled trial of a digital therapeutics in temporomandibular disorder (TMD) patients: A preliminary study

“…However, more research is needed to fully understand the potential benefits and limitations of DTx and to overcome the challenges to its adoption in healthcare. 50 Despite the potential benefits, there are also challenges to the adoption of DTx in healthcare. One of the main challenges is the lack of regulation and standardization, which can make it difficult for healthcare providers to evaluate and adopt new technologies.…”

The Design and Development of an Embodied Semi-Autonomous Mentoring Intelligence (SAMI) for Use in Virtual Reality Interventions, Operationalized for the Self-Management of Chronic Pain

“…Next generation pain management solutions will need to see a shift in expertise from individual practitioners to systems (Khirasaria et al, 2020;Rejula et al, 2021). To provide solutions at scale, some level of automation will be necessary.…”

A look to the future: Pandemic-induced digital technologies in vascular surgery

“…Digitalization of therapeutic interventions involves the transformation of care delivery using digital, electronic health, and mobile health technologies [ 89 , 90 ]. In part, this consists of the delivery of timely and targeted health care information to individual patients.…”