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.

News in Context:

• • Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright
  • Pear Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es $50M to devel­op and mar­ket a port­fo­lio of dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics for men­tal health
  • Mind­strong Health rais­es $14 mil­lion to mod­ern­ize the diag­no­sis and treat­ment of neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­or­ders via arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and smartphones
  • Pend­ing FDA review and approval, research find­ings pave way for Akili’s EVO to become first brain train­ing plat­form pre­scribed for ADHD
  • The FDA cre­ates new Dig­i­tal Health unit to reimag­ine reg­u­la­to­ry paths in the age of scal­able, AI-enhanced innovation
  • Pre­sen­ta­tions by dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics pio­neers dur­ing the 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: