Abstract

  The convergence of health and digital technology has led to the development of Digital Health, a broad category of digital health technologies aimed at improving human health and well-being, optimising the quality and safety of care, increasing access to treatment, making health services more efficient and reducing overall health care costs. As a subset of Digital Health, Digital Therapeutics are an emerging class of medicines that deliver evidence-based therapeutic interventions. Similar to drugs, Digital Therapeutics consist of active ingredients and excipients. While the “digital active ingredient” is primarily responsible for the clinical outcome, “digital excipients” (virtual assistant, reminders, reward systems etc) are necessary to ensure the best user experience to the patient and to allow the prolonged use of the therapy. In order to allow interaction with patients, Digital Therapeutics may take different patient facing digital form, as smartphone applications, videogame, virtual reality programs and others. The research and development process of Digital Therapeutics consists of software development, pilot and full clinical development. The confirmatory randomized controlled clinical trials are critical to generate evidence of benefit for regulatory approval, reimbursement and prescription. Digital Therapeutics have the potential to transform the management of chronic diseases and to represent the first therapeutic option offered by each doctor to each of their patients with chronic disease and dependence. Since these expectations may or may not be fulfilled and potential benefits may be accompanied by unintended and/or adverse effects, the introduction, implementation, use and funding of Digital Therapeutics should be carefully evaluated and monitored.

Keywords: Digital; Therapeutics

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Citation

Citation: Roberto Verna., et al. “Digital Therapeutics-What they are, what they will be". Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 4.3 (2020): 134-142.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Roberto Verna., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.