The pharma giant has unveiled DTx Connect, which will enable clinicians to prescribe, through their EMR platforms, select digital health treatments and manage care and adherence.
Pharma giant AmerisourceBergen is jumping on the digital therapeutics bandwagon, with plans to create a platform through which healthcare organizations can access and prescribe novel digital health treatments.
The Pennsylvania-based drug wholesale company this week announced the launch of DTx Connect, an ordering, dispensing, and fulfillment platform designed to help both prescribing clinicians and the growing ranks of digital therapeutics companies offering digital health alternatives to the traditional standard of medication or in-person care.
“While digital therapeutics and diagnostics offer tremendous potential, addressing challenges across the provider workstream and patient journey remain critical to unlocking the value these products have to offer,” Jason Dinger, SVP of Strategy and Innovation at AmerisourceBergen, said in a press release. “Given our role in the supply chain and our portfolio of commercialization services, we are uniquely positioned to build a solution that aims to address unmet needs and helps patients start and stay on physician-ordered products. DTx Connect, in addition to AmerisourceBergen’s patient support and market access consulting services, enables us to deliver enhanced support across the product lifecycle, helping to advance accessibility.”
As defined by the Digital Therapeutics Alliance, digital therapeutics are software-based interventions delivered directly to the patient to treat, manage or prevent a wide range of disorders and diseases, including behavioral health concerns and chronic conditions. Officials say the US market is expected to grow roughly 25% per year through 2030.
The service is designed to integrate with electronic medical records (EMR) platforms, enabling clinicians to ePrescribe through the EMR. With patient engagement technology developed by Twistle, the DTx Connect platform delivers a welcome message to the patient on behalf of the care team via text or a patient portal, along with a link to download the digital therapeutic product and access educational resources.
The platform also enables the care team to text, call, or deliver messages through a companion app to ensure proper use and engagement, along with adherence monitoring, and it allows for patient status alerts, including notifications for patient fulfillment.
Several digital health companies plan to offer services on the platform, according to AmerisourceBergen executives, including pediatric behavioral health company Cognoa, chronic care management company Mahana Therapeutics and Videra Health, which offers AI-assisted video assessment and remote patient monitoring services.
Eric Wicklund is the associate content manager and senior editor for Innovation at HealthLeaders.