The Rise of Digital Health
From wearable health tech to telehealth, here’s how digital transformation could impact the pharma industry and patient access.
| 2 min read | Opinion
What we asked: “Looking ahead to the next 5–10 years, what will be the key disruptors and/or what can be improved upon in the pharma industry?”
Response from: Dave Hanaman, Chief Commercial Officer and co-founder, Curavit Clinical Research
The past decade has seen remarkable growth in digital health, from which smartphones served as the catalyst. As of 2020, there were over 318,000 mHealth apps available on major app stores, with an estimated 200 new apps being added per day! Wearable devices, such as Fitbit and Apple Watch, have gained traction too. By 2022, the global wearable device market had reached over $100 billion, with an estimated 533.6 million wearable devices shipped worldwide. These devices will likely evolve to include more sophisticated health monitoring features, thus further integrating digital health into daily life. As a result, more digital therapeutics and diagnostics will leverage commercially-available products as their delivery platforms.
The COVID-19 pandemic also boosted the rapid adoption of telehealth services. In its early months, telehealth visits increased by 154 percent compared to the same period in 2019. Healthcare providers quickly scaled up their telehealth capabilities in response and while the growth has slowed, it has not stopped. By the end of 2020, an estimated 46 percent of patients in the US were using telehealth to replace cancelled healthcare visits. Finally, from a regulatory perspective, bodies like the FDA have provided more guidance on digital health products, including mobile apps, wearables, and decentralized clinical trials. This regulatory support included faster approvals and clearer pathways for digital therapeutics and other innovative products that will come in the future.
Response from: Kim Moran, SVP & Head, US Rare Diseases, UCB
Digital care transformation, or digitally-enabled care, could dramatically improve the industry to close the patient “healthcare infinity loop,” which is when patients get stuck in their care journey. Either their symptoms don't translate to a diagnosis, or they don’t have access to optimal treatment, care, and support. This is especially important in the rare disease space, where smaller patient populations are harder to find, harder to treat, and require a higher level of support.
Through the power of data, analytics, and technology, while protecting patients from a HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) perspective, we have the potential to better understand the complexity and individual nature of these diseases, to then better support a more personalized patient journey.
By really listening to patients and learning more about them, we can enable a level of granularity into actionable insights that can help close the healthcare infinity loop, such as decreasing the time to diagnosis and increasing the time to access the right care. The use of integrated data and AI can support changes that need to be made in the healthcare system to better serve this special rare disease patient population.
Read over 100 other views on the future of the pharma industry on our special web page.
