Modern healthcare today isn’t the same as it was even a few years ago. Through a winning combination of science, design, and technology, a digital therapeutics solution can significantly improve the efficiency of the modern healthcare sector. In terms of innovative treatment methods, data collection, and cost-effectiveness,  it has brought about a revolution in the current medical field.

Healthcare and Technology
With the rapid adoption of innovations and technology, the healthcare industry is reshaping and transforming itself in bigger and better ways. The modern healthcare industry employs a multitude of technological innovations to ensure that the patient receives optimum benefits. It uses a wide range of new technology products and devices such as mobile phones and apps, biometric sensors, diagnostic products for this purpose. Health Information Technology (HIT) is a rapidly evolving field that includes electronic medical record systems, digital order entry and prescriptions, and digital therapeutics applications.

Here are some of the latest technical innovations in the medical field:

Mobile Health (mHealth) – includes fitness trackers and nutrition apps.
Personalized Healthcare – includes predictive analytics and clinical decision support.
Telehealth – includes remote patient monitoring and remote care.
Wearable devices and sensors that track and capture data and communicate with patients.
As the demand for patient-centric healthcare increases worldwide, the field of healthcare will undergo a further transformation over the years. The rise of digital therapeutics in healthcare has already set off a marked revolution within the medical sector. The future of healthcare seems to be driven by more technologically advanced products that provide better, customized healthcare programs to the patients.

The Emerging World of Digital Therapeutics
A digital therapeutics solution (DTx) helps make use of different programs to offer better treatment to patients. It looks to ensure evidence-based medications and takes into account everything from possible ways to prevent disease, to its treatment, and management. In turn, it ensures that patients receive the care they expect while achieving better health outcomes.

Challenges Faced by the Healthcare Sector: How to Overcome Them with Digital Therapeutics?
As chronic diseases and conditions are on the rise globally, treatment of these conditions exerts increased demand on health systems. According to Business Insider, the highest share of the USA healthcare is spent on the treatment of chronic diseases. Not only is the treatment of these conditions exceedingly expensive, but they are also highly unreliable. Here, DTx comes into the picture. With the use of available technology such as wearable fitness trackers, this advanced healthcare solution reduces the occurrence of chronic conditions to a great extent.

However, this evidence-based technology faces a few challenges when it comes to further development, as mentioned hereunder:

Data privacy issues.
The question of adoption.
Lack of awareness about digital health programs.
Standing out from the other health and wellness products.
The question of reimbursement.
Refusal from healthcare providers and patients.
Regulatory approvals.
We will take a look at them in detail below. For one, health insurance companies aren’t going to trust any new technology easily, and it can time to accept the idea citing concern about data privacy and security. Digital therapeutics companies in healthcare thus need to do more to earn trust.

The lack of awareness also means that physician adoption can remain low, somewhat the final hurdle to consumer adoption. You need the right marketing strategy and partnerships to bring in more physicians to the fold.

Then, there is the question of how you can distinguish a digital therapeutics solution from the other products in the health and wellness market. Let’s take the Apple or Google app store – how do you ensure more people download them?

The question of regulatory approval translates to FDA clearance, and given the body’s stringent requirements, many DTx companies look to partner with a pharmaceutical company.

This brings us to the question of reimbursement, which is vital if we are to see the emergence of DTx. The adoption here will depend on the incentives payers, and DTx companies can partner with pharmaceutical companies to explore the different distribution pathways. For instance, if the DTx company can prove that they can help in better monitoring the patients’ condition, private health insurers might be interested in partnering with them.

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