Digital Therapeutics: An Ongoing Revolution

This article deals with the much-debated topic of digital therapeutics. Starting from a general overview of the role that technology has carried out in the medical field since first innovations, this paper means to highlight the essential support that technlogy has provided, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has made evident the necessity or, at least, the possibility of rethinking medical science in a more digital perspective. This article is aimed to focus on digital therapeutics, which is a specific type of technological product (such as gadgets and medical devices), highlighting remarkable differences that exist within the nebulous world of digital health, starting from the need for digital therapeutics to be supported by a clinical trial that proves its efficiency.Moving on to the different types of diseases that can be treated, we can mention some concrete examples of digital therapeutics: Deprexis and ReSet, a cognitive-behavioral therapeutics, and Endeavor, an interactive game. In order to understand the substrate on which digital therapeutics is inserted, it is mandatory to address the issues of global regulation of this kind of therapies. Starting from the US context, in which digital therapeutics was born and authorized for the first time by the Food and Drug Administration, we reach the EU case, in which few countries are open up to this technology: in this regard, we mention the experiences of Italy, Germany, Belgium, France and England. In the end, the article examines the critical issues and potential that digital therapeutics represent for health systems.