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.”
igital health technologies, including mobile health (mhealth) and digital therapeutics (DTX), are developing at an increasing pace, providing the NHS with new opportunities to improve health and social care.
Both the NHS Long Term Plan and the Health Secretary’s Tech Vision look to harness these new technologies. As a result, a number of initiatives were launched in the first half of 2019 to facilitate the development and adoption of the most effective technologies.
NICE’s Evidence Standards Framework for Digital Health Technologies will ensure new technologies are clinically effective and offer economic value, while its HealthTech Connect will help identify and support new technologies for the UK health system to adopt.
MobiHealthNews — At the 79th Annual Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association in San Francisco, pharma giant Roche and India-based digital therapeutics company Wellthy Therapeutics presented real world data of improved diabetes care outcomes in a South Asian population when patients followed prescribed plan of medication and lifestyle modification in conjunction with a combination therapy of self-monitoring blood glucose device and a clinically validated digital therapeutic (DTx).
WHAT HAPPENED
The study evaluated data from 833 individuals who used both the Accu-Chek Active blood glucose monitor and the Wellthy Care Digital Therapeutic, to form an iPDM (integrated personalised diabetes management) solution. The Accu-Chek Active device was used to monitor blood glucose values, while the Wellthy Care Digital Therapeutic provided real time artificial intelligence-powered feedback and coaching, with a self-management program based on American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) guidelines.
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.”
SALT LAKE CITY and PORTLAND, Maine, June 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Health Catalyst, Inc. and MedRhythms, Inc. are teaming up to help the millions of Americans who are survivors of stroke to access a promising new digital therapeutic that uses sensors, music and artificial intelligence to measure and improve walking. The agreement is the first for Health Catalyst’s new life sciences business, which aims to align providers, patients, and life science companies through its physician ecosystem and evidence derived from its partnership with many of the nation’s largest health systems encompassing more than 100 million patient records.
Each year, more than 795,000 Americans suffer a stroke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many are left unable to walk or talk normally and require extensive care and rehabilitation, with total costs estimated at $34 billion a year. While existing therapies for these patients rely mainly on one-on-one physical therapy, MedRhythms has developed a neuroscience-based approach to treatment, employing the principles of rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS). RAS has been shown in over 50 clinical research studies to improve walking for patients with stroke, traumatic brain injury, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, and Parkinson’s Disease.
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.
Life Science Leader (Rob Wright) — So, why should pharma care about digital therapeutics? This was just one of the questions posed to a panel of digital therapeutics experts during the 2018 CNS Summit. Hailing from Akili Interactive Labs, Applied VR, Dthera Sciences, Novartis, Otsuka, and Pear Therapeutics, their collective backgrounds are impressive (i.e., physicians and Ph.D.s) with diverse experiences that include biotech, clinical research, FDA, and pharma (i.e., big, rare disease, small, and specialty). Just as impressive are some of the therapeutic areas in which they are working to find (or have found) digital treatments, either as mono or adjunctive therapies
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.
Better Therapeutics, a developer of prescription digital therapeutics for the treatment of cardiometabolic diseases, today announced an upcoming poster presentation of health economic data at the ISPOR 2019 Conference May 18 – 22 in New Orleans. The presentation will include data on the reduction of health resource utilization and cost-effectiveness of Better’s digital behavioral intervention in type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
Recognizing there are few existing assessments of the economic benefits of digital therapeutics, Better commissioned health economic and outcomes research (HEOR) to understand the cost-effectiveness of its intervention by analysing both economic and clinical benefit. The poster presentation will present selected data from that research.
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.