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Highlights
- As virtual healthcare changes the industry landscape, pharma and healthcare companies are working toward developing the next generation of digital assistants—called digital companions—for various therapeutic conditions.
- Digital companions are apps that can considerably improve patient adherence to medication, enable remote monitoring, and expedite interventions that will enhance an individual’s quality of life.
- Digital companions powered by technologies such as artificial intelligence, digital twins, and IoT sensors are fast gaining traction in the healthcare world.
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The need for digital companions
The consumerism of healthcare aided by digital technologies has given rise to the need for disease- and drug-based digital companions.
Further, there is a shift in the paradigm – from traditional healthcare to virtual healthcare – led by the proliferation of digital technologies in diagnostics, monitoring, and predictive analytics.
Pharma and healthcare companies are hoping to cash in on this momentum by developing the next generation of digital assistants called digital companions for various therapeutic conditions, especially those requiring continuum care. These companies realize the need to understand the patient’s journey and offer a seamless experience throughout the treatment and beyond. This is driven by higher acceptance of wearables and mobile apps for telemedicine and remote monitoring among patients.
The real-world data acquired through digital companions can improve the market positioning of a treatment and patients’ confidence. Pharma companies also collect and analyze this data to understand patient requirements and behavior and how they vary with geolocation, social determinants, environmental factors, and lifestyle, among others. The outcomes help assess the issues with medicine efficacy and the adverse events that are observed and reported; the accessibility of the drug to the patients in terms of supply and cost can assist in designing market strategies and improving patient experience.
Positive interventions throughout the care continuum
Digital companions help across the patient lifecycle, from first-time fill to managing care pathways.
One of the most significant initiatives for pharma companies is improving patient adherence to medication, to enhance an individual’s health.
Digital companions can increase patient adherence by:
- Educating patients and caregivers about the disease and treatment
- Regularly communicating the outcomes of remote monitoring to health care professionals (HCP), and appointment scheduling, which may help adjust the dosage and change the treatment at the right time
- Providing details of insurance plans with a better co-pay and facilitating prior authorization options
- Offering a tracking facility to the patient to know the availability of their medication
- Nudging for prescription refills and monitoring intake frequency to assess adherence
AI-enabled wearables and sensors
The global market for wearables—the primary contributor in the healthcare sector—is promising.
It is being driven by factors such as a rise in the availability of affordable devices, development in wireless technology, and the growing awareness of personalized healthcare.
Wearables and sensors powered by artificial intelligence (AI) enable healthcare professionals or caretakers to monitor vital parameters like temperature, glucose, blood pressure, and heart rate, among others, in real time. Additionally, wearables and sensors can help with continuous multimodal activity by monitoring senior citizens’ physical and mental health in the comfort of their homes.
Companies are developing methods to create models that use standard sensors and wearable data for remote monitoring of senior citizens’ movements, physical activity, medication adherence, gait monitoring, and so on.
Further, non-invasive sensing technologies like volatomics, augmented with AI-ML-based models, can help analyze breath markers for risk assessment of various disease conditions like diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), intestinal disorders, lung ailments, and the like. Many companies and research institutions also utilize sensors to monitor muscle electrical activity, sleep patterns, and movement to assess pain severity for a more objective analysis and treatment.
The companion apps can be augmented with digital twins (of organs, disease conditions, and so on) to understand the personalized response to various conditions and perform predictive analysis. The apps can remotely monitor health conditions and predict what-if scenarios. A digital twin can then be created, which fetches input data, including easy-to-use and cost-effective wearables and sensors. Digital twins have been applied to conditions like cardiac arrhythmia or atrial fibrillation, gait monitoring as well as a range of movements in neurological ailments like Parkinson’s. Digital twins of organs like the heart, skin, lungs, and GI tract have been developed to assess multiple outcomes and treatments.
Imaging has come a long way
The last decade has seen considerable development in imaging modalities and the demand for accurate diagnostic imaging, increasing the burden on radiologists.
There has also been an increase in chronic diseases like cancer and cardiac disorders, which add to the need to derive maximum value and detect accuracy from non-invasive methods, such as imaging. The adoption of image analytics has grown with the introduction of AI for improved accuracy and efficiency. This is expected to reduce the burden on radiologists and pathologists. Various AI-based medical imaging analytics applications include diagnosis, detection, and clinical decision support.
Further, AI can identify specific features in images that can be used for clinical decision-making in precision medicine, thereby aiding personalized treatment regimens. AI-ML, meta-learning, and other analytical methods have been used to gain insights and identify markers for landmark detection in images obtained from multiple body parts.
Image analytics has been applied for lesion detection in multiple organs as well as on histopathology images for identifying markers for cancer diagnosis and dosage optimization. Neural networks are optimized to handle these large images on mobile devices. Patients must upload an image of the affected area (like external lesions), and first-level analysis can be done on a mobile device. If the diagnosis is above a set threshold, it can be sent to the cloud for detailed imaging analysis or to healthcare professionals for review. These apps can further facilitate the sharing of these images with healthcare professionals for faster viewing and interpretation, expediting the diagnosis.
The image analytics platforms can be developed into web services or mobile apps where patients, healthcare professionals, or hospitals can upload the imaging data, which can be stored in the cloud, where AI-ML models can analyze the data. The companion app can communicate the outcomes with healthcare professionals or oncologists. The increasing demand for digital solutions and computer-aided diagnostics also opens a market potential for imaging analytics software.
Gamification for emotional well-being
A key aspect of continuum care and longer treatment regimens is the patient’s mental health, including stress, anxiety, and depression.
Digital companions can provide mental health tools for self-care; these include gamification and immersive patient interaction options. An emotional well-being companion may consider the analysis of a user’s audio, video, and text to provide timely alerts and gamified interventions when urgent attention is needed. These interventions can be suggested based on an individual’s geolocation as well as hobbies or interests for a more personalized experience.
Virtual interaction, anytime, anywhere
Digital companions can be augmented with technology enabling healthcare professionals to monitor remotely and take prompt action.
HCP-patient interaction can be facilitated using remote monitoring and immersive modalities, such as:
Telemedicine: Companion apps provide an option to schedule virtual or physical appointments with healthcare professionals or specialists depending on the patient’s condition. The app also offers features to remind the patients of appointments. Further, the outcomes of remote monitoring modalities can be automatically conveyed to the healthcare professional to enable quick action in case any discrepancies are observed.
Patient engagement using AR-VR: Immersive options, delivered though augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) solutions can be used to educate patients – in an interactive manner – about their condition and the treatment they are being provided. Virtual interactions between patients and healthcare professionals, as well as telemedicine, are possible using avatars, which offer a more realistic experience, improving patient adherence. Immersive options that can motivate patient adherence toward treatments using gamification and interactive methods for better engagement can be explored.
Digital companions and remote monitoring are also being explored by pharma companies as ways to evaluate the medical products in the market and the continuum of care for patients. The enablers (including point of care, use of bio twins, imaging data, and the like) can be applied by pharma companies as digital companions to the treatment procedure in the continuum of care. They provide objective individual outcomes and real-world data that pharma companies can use as a guide to design personalized treatment regimens as well as monitor adverse outcomes.
Real-world data can be analyzed to generate real-world evidence to assess the long-term efficacy or side effects of a drug beyond traditional clinical trials and epidemiological studies. Further, these enablers can be used in point-of-care settings facilitating the immediate tracking and recording of outcomes. Improving patient experience and understanding their treatment using cutting-edge technologies, including gamification, AI-ML, AR, and VR, can also improve adherence toward treatment thereby, improving outcomes and business impact of a drug or medical product.
