Today, several pharma players, mostly ‘encouraged’ by many non-pharma tech companies, are trying to gain, at least, a toehold in the digital health care space. It is visible even within the generic drug industry. Such initiatives, as they gain a critical mass, will remold the process of doing – almost everything in the pharma business, catapulting the concerned drug companies to a much higher growth trajectory, as many believe.
This is quite evident from an interview of Fierce Pharma with the senior management of Sandoz – the generic drug arm of Novartis, that was published on May 14, 2019. The honchos said: “We’re looking across the whole value chain to make sure we’re embracing digital and technology wherever we can. So that means from the way that we innovate, to the way that we sell and the way that we operate and do day-to-day business.” The process covers “a whole range of activities from how you use AI and automation, all the way through to prescription digital therapies.”
I discussed about leveraging technology in the pharma space to address many burning issues – both for patients and the pharma industry. One such article, “Focus on Patient Compliance To Boost Sales…And More…”, was published in this blog on May 20, 2019. It establishes that even world-class sales and marketing programs can, at best, ensure higher prescription generations, but can’t prevent over 50 percent revenue loss from those prescriptions, due to patient non-compliance.
Interestingly, the issue of ‘nonadherence to treatment’ is being debated, since several decades. Various conventional measures were suggested and also taken. But the problem still persists in a huge scale, with probably an increasing trend. Thus, fresh measures, preferably by leveraging modern technology, are of high relevance in this area.
In this article, I shall illustrate the above point, with one of the most exciting areas in the digital space – the digital therapeutics. This is a reality today and marching ahead at a much faster pace than many would have anticipated.
Unfolding another disruptive innovation in healthcare:
One of the articles that I wrote on this subject is ‘Unfolding A Disruptive Innovation in Healthcare,’ which highlights a different facet of the same subject. Thus, let me begin today’s discussion with a recapitulation of some important aspects of a drug, particularly the following ones:
- A large number of patients don’t find many drugs accessible and affordable during the entire course of treatment.
- Drugs have to be administered orally, systemically or through any other route
- Alongside effective disease prevention or treatment, many drugs may bother patients with long and short-term side-effects, including serious ones.
- Treatment outcomes can’t often be easily measured by patients.
These are, of course, known to many, but several questions come up in this area, which also deserve serious answers, such as:
- Are drugs indispensable for the treatment of all types of disease?
- Can a holistic disease treatment be made more accessible and affordable with radically different measures?
- Can the same effectiveness of a drug, if not more, be achieved with no side-effects with a non-drug therapy?
- Can outcomes be significantly improved following this process, as compared to drugs?
In search of answers to these questions – arrive digital therapeutics:
In search of answers to the above questions, a number of tech savvy whiz kids. dared to chart an uncharted frontier by asking themselves: Is it possible to treat a disease with a software – having no side-effects, but providing better cost effectiveness and treatment outcomes to patients?…continue reading…
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