As companies selling health care apps struggle to prove to a skeptical system that they really deliver results, we’re about to start hearing a lot more about “engagement.”
A new paper scrutinizing six clinical trials supporting four mental health apps cleared by the Food and Drug Administration argues there’s an urgent need to close the “gap between intention and real-world efficacy for digital therapeutics” — specifically, the dearth of data on how much people actually use digital treatments.
The authors dove into published studies, excavated what numbers they could, and ultimately concluded that some apps may be of fleeting interest to users. They argue that to see long-term success of software-based treatments, sometimes called digital therapeutics, the industry must confront this reality.
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