Digi Medicines
Context:
• Digital Vaccines, along with Digital Medicines, are part of an emerging medical field termed Digital Therapeutics that amalgamates medicine with technology to tackle lifestyle ailments.
Background:
• The healthcare system has failed to address the issue of chronic diseases as the healthcare system has been concentrating on the acute diseases.
• The chronic diseases which overwhelmingly affect the elderly population require long term monitoring and care.
Technological Advancements –
• With the proliferation of web 3.0 technologies operating in metaverse platforms, wearable technologies, Internet of Things (IoT), and Virtual and Augmented Reality (AR/VR), the development of digital vaccines promises to address multiple medical conditions at much lower cost through constant behavioural interventions.
• Digital Therapeutics is an intersection of neuroscience, cognitive sciences, heath analytics, and AI-powered mobile VR gaming
Diabetes –
• Majority of the patients suffering with diabetes are those who are suffering from type 2 diabetes which are linked to behavioral tendencies.
• These behavioral tendencies include high-calorie consumption and lack of physical activities.
• So continuous monitoring is required such as frequent blood sugar monitoring, medication adherence, and insulin self-injection, etc.
Cardiovascular diseases
• India has been recording high number of deaths due to cardiovascular diseases, the death rate due to cardiovascular diseases stand at 272 per 100000.
• Like diabetes, CVD is also linked to lifestyle and behavioural factors that require management of weight.
• There are wireless blood pressure monitors that are used in conjunction with an app to display blood pressure data. Historic readings are saved and can be accessed via the cloud, allowing either the patient or the physician to identify changes from previous readings
Challenges:
• There are associated challenges with it including privacy and regulation issues, privacy is a major concern for digital vaccines interventions.
• This could complicate the regulation challenges of these platforms for the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), which is responsible for drug approval, clinical trials, drug standards, quality control of imported drugs in the country.
Source The Hindu
