By Steve Dickman, CEO, CBT Advisors
A note to my readers: As of this week, I have been made a contributor to Forbes and many of my pieces will appear there. Thanks for your continued readership and please keep the comments and questions coming on Forbes, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Although replacing pharmaceuticals with apps still sounds like science fiction, it will be just a few years before getting medical treatment by downloading an app from the Apple App Store or from Google Play will begin to seem routine. All the pieces are coming together: startups are working on real medical challenges, apps are showing clinical utility and a path is emerging to approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The only things missing at this point are definitive proof and, oh yes, venture money. At a panel that I put together at Biotech Showcase in San Francisco last month (panel video here), three startups showed how they are tackling both the lack of funds as well as some real health issues: smoking cessation, attention deficit disorders and migraine. It is instructive that each of these companies sees peer-reviewed, controlled clinical trials as a must. A consensus seems to be emerging that in order to occupy the more clinically useful – and more highly remunerated – realm of “apps-as-drugs,” the winners will have to do much more than just monitoring.
To read the rest of my post and see which companies are emerging as leaders in the apps-as-drugs field, click the link or copy-paste it:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedickman/2015/02/11/coming-to-an-app-store-near-you-drug-like-interventions/
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