Potential of Digital therapeutics and increasing CVDs

The 21st century has been a remarkable century for humankind, as a lot of innovation, research and development has taken place in the field of healthcare, due to which we have been able to increase the overall lifespan of the human beings. 

However, the central question is, are we able to increase the healthspan of human beings?  We are living longer lives today, but our quality of life has not been improved throughout these years.

As we are broadening our research and innovation base, many problems associated with healthcare have also significantly increased over the period of time. We are still lagging when it comes to the health span domain due to the increase in chronic diseases, such as asthma, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s disease, etc. It has been observed that most of these conditions are comorbidities (i.e more than one disease/condition is present in a person at the same time), which are challenging to monitor and manage.

In order to deal with these chronic diseases, digital therapeutics, are gaining popularity among the younger generations. “Digital therapeutics or mobile health (mhealth) devices, are high-quality software programmed gadgets used to manage, treat, and prevent diseases or medical disorders. 

Digital therapeutics are available in various forms such as smartphone apps, wearable technology and digital pills etc. These devices are effective and efficient in dealing, regulating and monitoring chronic diseases. As of now digital therapeutics are employed for the diagnosis and prevention of diseases like asthma, depression, dementia, hypertension, obesity, types II diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, ADHD, cardiovascular disease, anxiety and many others.  Digital therapeutics over the short period of time have been able to improve the treatment quality and reduce the financial burden on the patients and their caretakers.

Continuous research & innovation, increase in the incidence of chronic diseases, awareness among the masses and approval by the regulatory government, rise in usage of smartphones are expected to expand the digital therapeutics market size in the upcoming years. However, increased pharma investment and healthcare focussed startups are more likely to act as digital therapeutics market drivers and impact and shape the future of digital therapeutic at a more significant extent.

The path will not be easy, as a data privacy concern, lack of awareness toward healthcare-based applications and lack of investment in digital therapeutics programs in developing countries, behavioural issues, patient convenience, and user-friendliness may act as the digital therapeutics market barriers.