Here’s a new term for you to consider: digital therapeutics. I guess I could add it to the list I polled about earlier: Digital Health, Connected Health, Wireless Health, Mobile Health, and Telehealth. By the way, the poll results are showing a mix basket when it comes to using these terms. Digital Health leads the way with mobile health following pretty closely behind and connected health with quite a few votes.
I don’t think adding digital therapeutics to the ring helps to clear up the confusion of terms, but I think it can open us open to a new way of thinking when it comes to how we use digital in healthcare. I’ve long loved the idea of prescribing an app and digital therapeutics is along those same lines. Can we prescribe a digital therapy that will help improve a patient?
Since we’re throwing out new terms that stretch our thinking, how about the ideas of digital chemistry and digital biology. I like these because they suggest a rigor in their study and understanding like you might see in chemistry and biology. I think it’s fair to say that the very best healthcare IT companies are going to be digging into the digital chemistry and digital biology world.
Once you start digging into these areas though, you better be ready for the FDA regulation that comes with therapeutics. I’ve written quite a bit about EHR and FDA regulation and this is why I don’t think EHR vendors will be digging into this type of digital therapeutics. Instead, I think the EHR will stick to being the database of healthcare.
In a recent video interview I did with Alan Portela, he made a really good point about the transition to really smart mobile health technologies that start to suggest treatment (some might call that a shift to digital therapeutics). The problem with many mobile health technologies that have avoided FDA clearance is that they won’t be able to do digital therapeutics. It will take a company that’s FDA cleared and understands that process to put these type of digital “treatments” into place.
I’m excited about the potential for digital therapeutics (or whatever word you prefer). This will change the way we look at healthcare and that will be a very good thing.