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There has been a lot of hype about the digital transformation of healthcare. Some commentators are beginning to say the field is growing too fast and others say it has already peaked. Sure, there have been many promises but now the initial exuberance is being tempered as people focused on responsible progress and real payment models come into the picture, setting the stage to help address healthcares many problems.

The good news is that industry leaders are working slow and sure to build the field of digital medicine. The goal is to harness the power of technology to transform healthcare and secure the business model. Groups such as the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) and Digital Therapeutics Alliance (DTA) are helping ensures this new field is evidence-based with effective and safe treatments. The DiMe scientific advisory board had its first meeting a couple of weeks ago (I am a board member) and committed to develop ethically sound Good Digital Practice types of guidelines.

Industry meetings are now focused on reimbursement and partnerships, not just cool shiny digital apps. The Digital Therapeutics (DTx) East conference was held on the Harvard Medical School campus. Attendance nearly doubled since the previous year and focus was on reimbursement, IPOs, partnerships and payors. The conference theme was integration of digital therapies into the healthcare system, which is code of course, for How are we going to pay for this stuff? Earlier themes centered on promoting science and excitement grew around positive clinical studies, which caught the attention of venture investors. But the field needed to mature and show that early speculators can get returns on their invested capital.

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Venture investors are beginning to see returns from public markets. Over $34 Billion in private funding has gone into digital applications in healthcare in the last decade, peaking with $9.5 Billion last year. This summer we saw a handful of high-value initial public offerings (IPOs), which means that financing risk is being transferred from venture insiders to public markets, who usually demand profits and have a low tolerance for promises. With Livongo, CatalystHealth and several others, there is a portfolio of publicly traded digital health companies that are collectively worth around $20 Billion. Some of these companies are experiencing over 2X annual revenue growth, which suggests payers are also voting with their pocketbooks. Public investor money helps validate the digital healthcare business model.

Conditions are ripe for a digital medicine inflection point. We all know that healthcare in America is extremely inefficient and provides poor accessibility. There are hundreds of millions who suffer from multiple chronic conditions or behavioral health issues including substance abuse. The sheer volume of need overwhelms the few thousand healthcare professionals who serve such populations. The average doctor visit is just 12 minutes and most people see their physicians only 2-3 times per year.Digital disease management such as Voluntis diabetes and oncology platforms make a difference because they leverage doctors and nurses time. The key to success is patient engagement that also improves adherence. For example, Proteus Digital Health has demonstrated success in difficult hypertension patients that were considered refractory to regular drug therapy.

Good digital practice guidelines will establish the trust that patients and doctors need to embrace technology-based solutions. The DiMe scientific advisory board has membership from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as well as some of the pioneers who developed early digital healthcare platforms. It takes a village for a new field to responsibly develop and professional societies are helping take on the challenge to create recommendations and a virtual library of evidence-based health information. DiMe has hundreds of members from across industry, academia and 24 different countries. They are working collaboratively to establish good digital practice guidelines to help set the standards for this new industry.

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The FDA is creating a regulatory atmosphere to help promote advances. Even government regulators are helping. Recently the FDA issued a statement on new steps to advance digital health policies that encourage innovation and enable efficient and modern regulatory oversight. This includes a draft of practices for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) based software as a medical device.

It is exciting to witness the birth of a promising new industry. As digital medicine matures we should have reason to believe that sometimes good things can develop when different groups collaborate to help sort out the mess that is healthcare.

Read more:

Digital Medicine Movement Is Growing Up And Thats A Good Thing - Forbes