Getting out your prescription pad and writing a script for a smartphone app might seem ridiculous, but the practice could soon become commonplace, as some apps are now considered therapeutic (not TikTok though, sorry).

The digital therapeutics industry was valued at $4.35 billion in 2021, a figure that’s expected to balloon to $18.1 billion in the next five years. Companies within the industry have promised to transform healthcare with their software products, which are meant to make a wide range of services from mental health care and opioid addiction treatment to diabetes management more accessible.

But few payers offer coverage for digital therapeutics—and without coverage, not many patients will be able to use these health solutions.

Andy Molnar, CEO of the trade group Digital Therapeutics Alliance, told Healthcare Brew that “payer coverage is truly the No. 1 blocker” in getting products to patients.

What are digital therapeutics? Digital therapeutics are software products used to prevent, manage, or treat a disease, Molnar said. And they require a lot of oversight: These products must be clinically validated, go through quality management systems, and be FDA-regulated in the US.

Molnar attributes the emergence of the digital therapeutics industry to the 2013 FDA approval of Welldoc’s prescription app BlueStar, which helps patients manage Type 2 diabetes. That same year, the FDA cleared a digital therapeutic called Freespira to treat panic disorder, and Pear Therapeutics, which has a range of products meant to treat serious diseases like opioid use disorder, was founded.

Today, some of the industry leaders include Omada Health that provides virtual care for chronic conditions and Akili Interactive, creator of a prescription video game for kids with ADHD. Each is valued at around $1 billion and have paved the way for other digital therapeutics companies when it comes to working with payers and getting FDA clearance.

Keep reading here.—MA

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Maia at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Maia for her number on Signal.

Staff schedules and doctor behavior could play a role in determining when births occur at US hospitals, new research suggests.

A study, published last month in the journal PLOS One, compared birthing trends in the US, England, and the Netherlands. The researchers found that vaginal births in US hospitals were most common between 8am and 5pm—the standard working hours for clinical staff—while US home births peaked in early morning hours from 2am to 5am.

By contrast, vaginal births in England and the Netherlands—countries that rely primarily on midwives, not obstetricians—occurred at similar times of the day as US home births, peaking between 1am and 6am, regardless of whether they took place at home or in a hospital, researchers noted.

Meanwhile, the average length of US pregnancies declined by more than half a week—39.1 weeks to 38.5 weeks—between 1990 and 2020, according to the study. In fact, nearly eight in 10 births in the US occurred before 40 weeks, compared to 56% in the Netherlands and 60% in England.

Researchers did not dive into the exact reasons for those differences, saying that it “merits future research.” Still, the authors raised an important question: “Would US maternity outcomes improve if care was organized to correspond to the natural rhythms of labor and the needs of laboring persons rather than organizational imperatives?”

Maven Clinic’s Chief Medical Officer Neel Shah, who worked on the study, told Healthcare Brew that the daytime peak in US births likely reflects the widespread use of epidurals and “passive descent”—when physicians initiate pushing more than 30 minutes after a patient is fully dilated. The practice is less common in the Netherlands and England.

Keep reading here.—SY

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Shannon at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Shannon for her number on Signal.

Heatwave-induced disruptions at data centers for a UK hospital group lasted for weeks thanks to its reliance on “371 legacy IT systems,” according to a board review of the matter.

Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT) was one of multiple organizations impacted by a summer 2022 heatwave that fried data centers across the London region—and its recovery took two months to complete. As temperatures soared, cooling systems servicing the two data centers that ran clinical and community IT systems for GSTT hospitals and clinics in London failed on July 19.

As a result, electronic patient records became inaccessible, forcing staff to switch to paperwork and causing delays that affected clinical systems involving everything from lab work to surgeries. The Guardian reported that the hospitals were forced to divert ambulances and critically ill patients to other institutions.

Contributing factors identified by the review included a “complex and confusing” system of roles and responsibilities in data center operations, old infrastructure, and problems with cooling systems. For example, responsibility for the system was split between two GSTT in-house teams, as well as ATOS, a private company that managed the data centers, NetApp, which manufactured the storage network equipment, and Secure IT, which serviced crucial cooling equipment.

GSTT was aware the St. Thomas’ data site had “suboptimal” ventilation since 2018, and St. Guy’s cooling system was approaching its end-of-life date. While investigators could not determine the exact combination of factors that led to the outage at the St. Thomas’ data center, they found it “probable” that age played a role, as heat within the building did not exceed the maximum operating temperatures provided by the manufacturer. The report found the St. Guy’s site did not plan ahead to cool condensers with water on July 19.

Click here to the full story on IT Brew.—TM

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: Ninety-one genes are linked to the waist-to-hip ratio for women, compared to 42 found in men. (Stat News)

Quote: “Leaving [her] in there for days, seeing all those kids, it was terrifying for me.”—Carmen, a Massachusetts mother, said of her daughter being “boarded” at an emergency room as the family waited for mental health care (Kaiser Health News)

Read: A Kansas whistleblower lawsuit uncovered examples in which VA doctors deviated from the standard of care when treating peripheral artery disease. (ProPublica)

It’s personal: LetsGetChecked is changing the way people approach their health. Their solution, myPGx, is making personalized care a reality through at-home pharmacogenomic testing. We spoke with the experts for our latest article.*

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