William Gibson, the noted science fiction author wrote, “the future is already here, it’s just not widely distributed yet.”  Our guest this week describes a future revolution in healthcare that is, in fact, already here.  Digital health therapeutics are transforming the delivery and experience of medical care and rapidly gaining traction in healthcare delivery.

Anand Iyer, the Chief Strategy Officer for Welldoc, has been engaged in digital health for well over a decade.  He is a respected global digital health leader.  Anand has a doctorate in computer and electrical engineering as well as a MBA from Carnegie Mellon.  Anand and his colleagues are part of a large and growing community of cutting-edge digital entrepreneurs that are building the technologic infrastructure and capabilities to enable a completely different approach to medical care.

In this interview, Anand describes the digital therapeutics that are being used to provide clinical care to patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.  To date, Welldoc’s FDA approved digital therapeutic, Blue Star, has been used by tens of thousands of healthcare consumers with diabetes.

In addition, in this episode Anand shares the following:

It is remarkable that Anand and his colleagues understood this potential well over a decade ago – the use of digital apps to treat diabetes, hypertension, depression, heart failure and numerous other chronic diseases.  Given their forethought, Anand asks us to imagine what digital technology and advanced analytics will be able to accomplish in the next 5 years. The use of: 24/7 real-time biometric recording and psychosocial/consumer information; coupled with machine learning, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, voice technologies, natural language processing and avatars; plus new coordinating & integrating operating platforms – will enable unimagined advances in medical care.  

Three closing thoughts:

As always, I am very interested in hearing your thoughts about this exciting domain of creating a new healthcare.

This will be one of a number of upcoming interviews focused on digital health.

Until next time, be well!

Zeev