IQVIA Offers New Report on Digital Health Trends in 2021
Innovation in digital health tools, including mobile health apps and wearable sensors, bring new approaches to the management of health conditions. Digital therapeutics to treat human disease are being approved by regulatory agencies around the world and reimbursement models are being established as developers generate and submit high-quality data on effectiveness to payers and employers. A new digital health report from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science examines digital health trends in four areas — innovation, evidence, regulation, and adoption — to assess how these new tools are becoming an entirely new therapeutic modality. Key findings from the report include:
- The acceleration of innovation in digital health tools as the number of health-related mobile apps available to consumers worldwide now surpass 350,000, with more than 90,000 digital health apps added in 2020 — an average of more than 250 apps per day.
- The advancement of regulatory approval and commercialization as digital therapeutics (DTx) and digital care (DC) products and tools — which incorporate software as a means to treat, prevent, or manage specific diseases or conditions — continue to proliferate and more than 250 such products are now identified, including roughly 150 commercially-available products.
- The growing maturity of clinical evidence regarding app effectiveness has increased, with more than 2,000 studies published since 2007, including almost 1,500 published in the past five years.
- The reduction of barriers to adoption due to the fact that many commercialization pathways now exist for digital health tools, providing more opportunities for app manufacturers to realize an economic return on investment for those tools supported by robust evidence and user demand.
For more information, contact Glen Hall at glen.hall@Iqvia.com.
