Is This the Next Best Investment?
The digital therapeutics market was worth $1.7 billion in 2017. It is expected to hit $7.8 billion by 2025.
Chronic disease affects approximately half of all adult Americans, accounting for at least seven of the ten leading causes of death and 86% of all healthcare spending. Why is this?
The history of medical progress in the 20th-century was dominated by advancements in the treatment of acute diseases, like influenza and tuberculosis. These developments — which included better sanitation, antibiotics, vaccines, and surgeries — have successfully reduced morbidity and mortality today.
In contrast, the major issue facing healthcare in the 21st-century is chronic diseases, like hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes. In fact, the increase in the prevalence of chronic diseases is the primary contributor to skyrocketing healthcare costs today.
An unintended consequence of our 20th-century success is that our modern healthcare system was born and developed with acute diseases in mind. Since the solutions for acute care are general rather than personalized for each patient, it’s therefore unlikely that chronic disease will be prevented or effectively managed in the 20th-century fashion with a pill, an injection, or surgery.
A 15-minute visit with a physician every few months, general recommendations to lose weight and exercise, and a lifetime of medicine intake will not be enough to solve our epidemic of chronic disease.
The most effective way to manage chronic diseases is behaviors that prevent disease development in the first place, such as weight loss, exercise and quit smoking — it requires continuous interventions and consistent support to create lifestyle changes. Interventions can include coaching, discipline and motivation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and support groups.
But how?
So, what is digital therapeutics, or DTx? Why now?
DTx is a product or a service that utilizes technology and the internet to offer people the possibility of continuous monitoring, behavior modification, and personalized interventions at low cost, potentially easing the burden of chronic disease in cost-constrained healthcare systems.
It is a fast-growing market to treat, manage, or prevent chronic diseases. The DTx market is growing at CAGR 20.5% and is expected to be worth $7.8 billion in 2025. Many companies are creating DTx solutions to combat chronic diseases like diabetes, stroke, obesity, dementia, depression, and more. Investors have poured over $12.5 billion into DTx.
With the advent of wearable technology, the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile computing platforms, value-based care and new incentives for patients, employers, payers, and healthcare systems, we can envision delivering DTx to people the same way we fluorinate our drinking water.
Additionally, the time is ripe for the development and implementation of DTx. The enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the US, the growing interest of employers in managing employee healthcare costs, and the explosion in technological medical progress, smartphone ownership, and broadband internet penetration are making DTx a promising industry.
So, where does this bring us to?
At Brilliant & Company, we are always inspired to create a healthier life. We started in 2016 with Bandi and last year with Pico. This year, we released PiCO Home — a smart, portable, and highly accurate air quality monitor — to measure the air around you. It gives users personalized recommendations on how to stay safe and healthy. PiCO Home marks our entry into the smart home market, and its integration with smart AI speakers like Amazon Alexa gives users a unique, interactive, and fun way to monitor their environment.
As air quality care and breathing healthily remains the core of what we do, we plan to launch PiCO GO next year, a revolutionary product that combines all the features and technology from PiCO Home, to herald our entry as a digital therapeutics for pediatric asthma patients, into the medical market.
This is significant because we recognize that the epidemic of chronic disease we face in the 21st-century requires methods different from those delivered by our 20th-century healthcare systems.
Unlike acute problems in the past, chronic disease, specifically pediatric asthma patients, requires prevention and continual intervention that promotes lifestyle changes. PiCO GO fits in such paradigm, given the unsustainability of the high cost of our healthcare system and how patients can benefit by using technology, the internet, and AI at low cost to better manage their conditions.
PiCO GO will have a high-capacity battery, a GPS, telecommunications module, and biometric sensors to read heart rates. Physicians can use this to better monitor their patients, and for patients, they can better manage and prevent the frequency and severity of asthma attacks. These forces, along with substantial technological progress and advances in computer and behavioral science today, will give PiCO GO, as a DTx, the opportunity to be used as a major tool to address our 21st-century healthcare problems.
To inquire more about Brilliant & Company, please do not hesitate to drop us a line:
- CEO / Ryan Yun / ryan.yun@brilcom.com
- COO / Lucas Choi / lucas.choi@brilcom.com
- Global Marketing Manager / Steve Tan / steve.tan@brilcom.com
