Digital Medicine
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2020 and COVID has taught us that we need to be more adaptive and creative with technology. One of the obvious extension of our existing technology was to use it for virtual doctor visits. The core technology for virtual meetings has been around for decades (fun fact: the first working video conference call technology came in 1936) but the consistent and planned use of the technology for medical services has always been very spotty. Telemedicine as concept usually went towards providing only specialist medicine rather than everyday doctor’s appointments. COVID pushed it that way, and more and more we see all kinds of doctor visits are being pushed towards possible virtual visits whether it be with full on video conferences or be through mobile apps that connect patients with doctors or medical care givers.
But apart from this push towards adoption of existing technology for use towards medical visits there is a significant new trend of new software and devices that can provide medical diagnosis, advice, therapy and treatment. This is the new generation of software platforms that will most likely be the new frontier - both for software space and medicine.
Collectively termed “digital medicine” - these innovative platforms leverages mobile devices to record data such as users hear rate, electrolytic conditions of user’s skin or sweat, facial expressions, exercise, sleep, even texting activity and apply artificial intelligence on the data to flag possible onset of conditions or facilitate treatment. Some smart watches (apple watch being the leader in this space) has been putting in all kinds of sensors and opening up the data for those sensors so that app developers can develop innovative apps from heart attack alerts to health monitoring. In recent times this space is heating up with a new generation of platforms that go beyond simple heart rate monitoring. Let me go over some early stars in this space.
The first FDA approved digital therapeutic is reSET which is described as Prescription Digital Therapeutic (PDT) for Substance Use Disorder (SUD) intended to provide cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). It gives clinicians real-time data on their patients’ cravings and triggers. Also from the same company is Somryst the first and only prescription digital therapeutic indicated to treat chronic insomnia. Somryst is intended to improve insomnia symptoms by providing neurobehavioral intervention (cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia – CBT-I) to adults 22 years of age and older with chronic insomnia. EndeavorRX is a video game based therapy platform for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This one is also FDA approved and operational. All these platforms are administering therapy and treatment that even a few years ago would only be administered by doctors and nurses taking up time and effort and obviously were expensive to run.
Another rising star in this new generation is the health startup Odin one of their successful product is a product called Hemoflow, which is a non-invasive device that helps doctors save lives by providing real time and trending blood flow monitoring of injured limbs. It is placed on the injured limb at the ankle or wrist. Light emitters & detectors are used to collect 32 data points a second. The data is then used by the software with artificial intelligence capabilities to determine the blood flow characteristics in the limb. The data can be shown in realtime on mobile apps and other devices and transmitted online.
Another interesting thing to note that the digital medicine space is not only for new startups. Old hands like Microsoft is making huge strides in this space too. Azure Health Bot is a fully functional cloud service that M$ is running and it has played an important role during the pandemic with governments and hospitals leveraging it’s features. It is fully customizable and programmable (as you’d expect!) thus it opens up the possibility of innovation in this space without reinventing the wheel every time.
Another technology that is fast reaching release ready are wearable stickers that monitor health conditions. One of the leaders in this space is BodyNet which coming from a Stanford lab but is industry ready. An early start on this was from a tech called AmpStrip which won a CES award in 2015 but suddenly went secretive to pivot into something else (which isn’t out yet). There are others popping up all around based on this skin level sticker technology that then connects to a device via AR.
