Building a digital health solution
Many Digital Health product companies, attracting record-breaking investment even half-way through 2020, are still focussed on generic, ‘one size fits all’ platforms. Take Wellthy Therapeutics, for example, who beat us at pitching a Digital Health solution for Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) patients to pharmaceutical executives at Ferrer. Wellthy have built a “smartphone-based lifestyle management programme for people with chronic conditions”. I, for one, would argue that a platform initially built for diabetes does not necessarily translate well to other, very different chronic conditions such as PAH. In fact, it enitrely misses one of only three key pillars of the patient-centred solution we present below. On the other hand, however, their platform pitch had a key strength against our proposal: an already developed and partly proven programme. So why would one endure the hard work and time of developing something from the ground up, then? In a rare opportunity to share our work, which usually remains confidential, we showcase the generation of a concept for a Digital Health solution to enhance PAH patients’ quality of life. We invite you to consider the pros and cons of the two models: bespoke vs. generic, holistic vs. partial, patient-centric vs. ‘platform’ push. Tell us what approach you think is best in the comments below! Let us start with why we worked on this project: Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension is a rare, chronic disease that rapidly deteriorates quality of life. Thanks to patient associations such as FCHP, and pharma companies like Ferrer, both the standard of care and life expectancy for PAH patients has greatly improved over the last decade. But patients are still missing out on the solutions that today’s technology could afford them. In this context, Ferrer launched their first challenge to start-ups in the Barcelona Health Hub ecosystem and globally. “Most importantly, we drew in patients, caregivers, leading
