Build or buy: How should new DTx players be developing their digital treatments?
Summary
"When we founded Mahana, one of the very first things that I did [was] to reach out to some of the worlds top experts who were working in the intersection of gastroenterology and psychology to see if anybody had already developed a digital treatment that was psychology-based for a GI condition," Paull said. Kings Colleges Rona Moss-Morris and University of Southamptons Hazel Anne Everitt, who conducted the large study on Parallel, are well-known names within their research communities, he said, and have the type of entrepreneurial mindset that helped Mahana move quickly and lay the groundwork for an international deployment. Speier agreed that in-licensing a fleshed-out asset from academia is a viable path for companies that havent yet established the infrastructure for internal development, but warned against moving forward critically reviewing and improving upon the products design and body of evidence. But that level can be upfront investment can be prohibitively expensive for newcomers to the digital therapeutics space, Speier admitted, even before taking the challenges of systemizing development and structuring the eventual platform into account. "Thats certainly something thats in Pears future, which is to take our platform – which includes things like our quality management system, our clinical dashboard, integrations into different [EHRs], our PearConnect and our virtual care capabilities – and to really try to bring that to prescription digital therapeutics companies."