Reinventing Brain Medicine, Pharma adopts Digital Therapeutics: Evidence-based videogames, smartphone apps, and sensors

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From app store to drug store, dig­i­tal health is redefin­ing pharma’s pipeline (STAT):

“The pitch­es always sound­ed promis­ing: A new soft­ware app could track glu­cose lev­els for peo­ple with dia­betes or soothe the brains of insom­ni­acs. Most phar­ma exec­u­tives would polite­ly smile and nod, but then park their mon­ey some­where else.

Not any­more.

Backed by a grow­ing body of evi­dence, soft­ware is itself becom­ing a pre­scrip­tion for dis­eases rang­ing from depres­sion to heart dis­ease, and drug com­pa­nies are start­ing to take notice. In the past cou­ple years, many have quick­ly ramped up their invest­ments in dig­i­tal star­tups, infus­ing soft­ware-based ther­a­pies into pipelines once dom­i­nat­ed by tra­di­tion­al medicines.

These prod­ucts, known broad­ly as dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics, deliv­er treat­ment to patients through video games, smart­phone apps, and sen­sors buried in pills or attached to med­ica­tion dis­pensers. They are designed to stim­u­late changes in behav­ior — and in some cas­es brain func­tion — to help patients con­trol a vari­ety of ill­ness­es and chron­ic con­di­tions.” Keep read­ing article.

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