Digital health is increasingly becoming popular amongst people due to its varied benefits such as online consultations, access to medical history, and robust security. Plus, quick access to healthcare and treatment is driving people to use more of digital health applications.
Telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and fitness wearables are a few examples of digital health. One of its branches of it is digital therapeutics (DTx), which is driven by software to manage, prevent, and treat a specific medical disorder.
The ability of digital therapeutics software to treat specific areas such as substance use or chronic insomnia is compelling people to use it. In 2021 alone, the number of users of digital therapeutics software reached 44 million worldwide. Since there’s an increase in the number of digital therapeutics users, healthcare developers can implement the following key features of digital therapeutics software to gain a competitive edge in the market.
Digital Therapeutics Vs. Digital Health
Digital health is a broad category and encompasses all technologies used for health and wellness purposes. Examples include meditation apps, step count, telehealth, etc.
Digital health apps and software store and transmit data, hence they’re secured with rules such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health).
On the other hand, digital therapeutics is a part of digital medicine (products that are used to intervene in healthcare). Plus, it refers to technologies that treat, manage, and prevent specific diseases or disorders. Digital therapeutic products are certified and regulated as per government standards for safety reasons.
5 Crucial Features of Digital Therapeutics Software
1. Compliance
Digital therapeutics software stores and records ePHI (Protected Health Information) which needs to be guarded under the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Digital therapeutics software developers ensure that robust security measures are in place to protect vital PHI. Failure to do so results in fines or prosecution.
Furthermore, cybersecurity is a key aspect required to gain approval from regulatory bodies such as FDA (Food and Drug Administration). The USA regulates electronic records generated by DTx software and the FDA’s CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) requires validation testing for technology solutions and software that transmit, modify, or maintain electronic records.
Additionally, the DHSPP (Digital Health Software Precertification Program) tackles testing problems of DTx software. These all security measures and regulations help to maintain compliance with digital therapeutics software.
2. Disease Intervention
Digital therapeutics software is a solution for chronic disease treatment such as type 2 diabetes, heart failure, or Alzheimer’s disease. Research in digital therapeutics has shown positive outcomes in treating chronic diseases. For instance, in a diabetes prevention study, prediabetes participants lost an average of 4.7 percent baseline body weight after 1 year, and 4.2 percent after 2 years; they also ended up losing A1c by a mean of 0.38 percent after a year.
Digital therapeutics are introduced by several healthcare facilities to help patients be in better control of their health. Further, the disease intervention features target exercise and diet through personalized health coaching with doctors, and reduce chances of developing chronic diseases and managing them.
Disease intervention also applies to substance use. Digital therapeutic applications are developed to treat alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana addiction.
3. Health Data Management
Health data gives a comprehensive outlook on patients’ medical care and treatment. An overall view of pat medical records helps healthcare providers to predict and govern appropriate medications.
Further, health data management is an effective way to increase patient engagement through care suggestions and reminders which are specific only to them. Tracking healthcare data improves patient outcomes as healthcare professionals can predict the possibilities of future medical issues and take countermeasures to tackle them.
Health data management features ensure that data entry is automated through tools designed to capture patient data. Automated data entry reduces error rates as compared to manual entries. Chances of a positive outcome are increased due to a decrease in medical errors. Additionally, fewer errors mean less time and money spent on fixing data entry mistakes.
The usage of voice recognition tools in health data management is a terrific option to further reduce errors in data entry. According to JAMA research, there was a 7.4 percent decrease in error rate for clinical documentation generated via voice recognition tools. Voice recognition tools bolster healthcare providers’ satisfaction as they can easily dictate patients’ conditions and not spend time writing them all down.
4. Doctor-Patient Interactions
Doctors often struggle to provide enough time to patients throughout their schedules. Packed clinics and appointments make it difficult for them to pay adequate attention to every patient.
Other than this, patients have a lot of questions on diet, well-being, their medical conditions, and so on; and doctors can’t answer every question as it requires a significant amount of time.
However, the doctor-patient interaction feature helps patients to get access to experts and seek personalized advice online. This way, doctors can also spend enough time with patients to understand their lifestyles and offer treatment accordingly.
Further, growth in patient-doctor communication decreases patient distress as well. Digital therapeutics software features bring together experts from varied fields under one roof for the benefit of patients.
5. Reminders
With more than one medication, it’s difficult to stay on schedule. Hence, medication reminder serves as a beneficial feature for patients to stay on track with their schedule. Especially, for the elderly population, who suffer from memory issues or ailments, reminders play a substantial role.
Reminders not only notify about medication intake but also when to restock meds. For this to work, patients need to regularly take note of the dosage and the number of pills bought, and then note this data in digital therapeutics software. When meds are about to run out of stock, patients are reminded of them well in advance.
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