STAT News (Brittany Flaherty) — Chronic diseases are costly in every sense of the word. Not only are they expensive to treat but they are the leading cause of death and disability in the United States, where more than half of U.S. adults have at least one of them. The CDC cites chronic diseases as a leading driver of the nation’s $3.3 trillion in annual health care costs.
Type 2 diabetes is one of the most common and expensive to treat chronic conditions. Nearly 30 million people in the United States are living with it, and 84 million have prediabetes, which can lead to the full-blown disease, though 90% of them don’t know they have it.
While there are steps people can take to prevent, manage, and treat chronic diseases like diabetes, heart and kidney disease, arthritis, asthma, and others, they are difficult to implement and even harder to maintain. Seeing an opportunity, an array of digital health companies have developed services to help people manage and treat these conditions.
MedCity News — The research, which was published in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, involved 39 patients who have COPD and had at least one hospitalization or emergency room visit during the year prior to enrollment.
“We were encouraged to see that most patients were able to use the device without issue, and that around three-quarters of patients who performed the voluntary end-of-study survey noting the EIM [electronic inhaler monitoring] sensor was either ‘very easy to use’ or ‘easy to use,’” Attaway said.
In a comment sent to MedCity, Propeller Health CEO David Van Sickle added that the study “shows not only that digital health can decrease healthcare utilization for COPD, but also that patients find the tools easy to use and they can be readily adopted in today’s clinical setting.”
MobiHealthNews (Dave Muoio) — Yesterday, CVS Health unveiled Vendor Benefit Management, a new service that will help CVS Caremark pharmacy benefit management (PBM) clients roll out and manage third-party health products.
As the service is applicable to both digital and non-digital health and wellness products, the company has decided to inaugurate its initiative by announcing Big Health — maker of the CBT-based sleep app Sleepio — as the first vendor participating in the service.
“Given that poor-quality sleep and insomnia affect approximately 30 percent of adults, and is a condition that can impact a wide variety of mental health conditions, we are pleased to be working with Big Health to help make their digital therapeutic product, Sleepio, more accessible,” Dr. Troyen A. Brennan, chief medical officer at CVS Health, said in a statement. “Big Health’s commitment to clinical evaluation and research aligns with our focus on applying evidence-based medicine to provide our clients and their members with access to appropriate health solutions and services, and many of our clients are interested in adopting this platform to help increase member access to these types of solutions, including Sleepio.”
STAT News (Kate Sheridan) — Leaders like J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Dimon, acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Ned Sharpless, and researcher and author Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee may be the marquee names at the biotech industry’s annual conference, BIO.
But increasingly, the convention program, which starts this week in Philadelphia, is putting a spotlight on smaller companies, too.
This year’s conference will offer panels with titles like “Bitcoin your data!” and “How could AI help cure cancer in the next five years?” On Wednesday alone, three separate panels have the words “artificial intelligence” in their titles. A form of the word “disrupt” appears twice, for those counting. Representatives from 23andMe and Flatiron Health will speak, along with key digital health officials at big pharma companies like Roche and Novartis.
Pharmaphorum — An entirely new category of medicine is emerging, and a new wave of digital therapeutics start-ups is joining the effort to bring meaning and definition to this new industry.
Although the digital therapeutics sector is still only in its early phases, the frontrunners have already covered some important ground, laying its first foundations in terms of how the medical software interventions are seen and defined.
In recognition of the promise of digital therapeutics, they have this year been added to Bayer’s G4A programme – which is open for applications until May 31. The digital health accelerator is particularly on the lookout for impactful digital therapeutics solutions that can be applied in oncology, women’s health or the cardio-renal area.
To get an inside view on progress within the digital therapeutics sector, we spoke with the Digital Therapeutics Alliance’s executive director Megan Coder, who also discussed how digital therapeutics start-ups can advance their solutions and collaborate with the industry alliance she heads up.
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut–(FORBES)–Professional groups and industry-wide collaborations are emerging to drive the growth of healthcare innovation. The development of high-quality, evidence-based products and services is now being supported by the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) as well as the existing Digital Therapeutic Alliance (DTA).
The use of digital tools for better diagnosis and outcomes is rapidly progressing. The global digital health market is expected to reach $223.7 billion within five years based on increasing penetration of mobile devices, remote patient monitoring, and growing demand for advanced information systems. These products could represent a fundamental shift in healthcare services and actionable data generation according to experts.
BOSTON & OSAKA, Japan — (BUSINESS WIRE) — Akili Interactive (“Akili”), a leading digital medicine company creating prescription treatments for people living with cognitive dysfunction and brain-related conditions, and Shionogi & Co., Ltd. (“Shionogi”), a major research-driven pharmaceutical company focused in two therapeutic areas: infectious diseases, and pain/CNS disorders, today announced they have entered into a strategic partnership for the commercialization of Akili’s digital medicines, AKL-T01 and AKL-T02, in Japan and Taiwan.
Nicky Lineaweaver/Business Insider – Digital therapeutics has caught the eye of pharmaceutical companies as a potential balm to a host of the pharma industry’s struggles, according to MedCity News. Digital therapeutics is a category of software — typically in the form of consumer-facing mobile health apps — that replaces or complements the existing treatment of a disease.
PharmaTimes (Jim O’Donoghue) — The future will see the pharma industry change two things: what and how it sells. As payers become more focused on Value Based Contracts (VBCs), the days of pay-per-pill are disappearing. Drugs will remain core but they will be augmented by a portfolio of digital therapies, wrap-around services and data analytics, which providers will pay for according to overall patient outcomes. But what are Digital Therapeutics, and what do they mean for pharma firms?
NPR (Rhitu Chatterjee) – Paige Thesing has struggled with insomnia since high school. “It takes me a really long time to fall asleep — about four hours,” she says. For years, her mornings were groggy and involved a “lot of coffee.”