4/10/2022 | Point of view
The missing pieces of the digital therapeutics puzzle
Kristin Milburn | CMO & MD, Publications, Events & Digital Health Ecosystem
When it comes to marketing digital therapeutics, companies can only do so much on their own until certain information infrastructure is in place, Kristin Milburn, managing director of Healthware Labs, tells pharmaphorum Deep Dive.
Over the last few years, digital therapeutics have made great strides in efficacy, regulatory approval, and even reimbursement. But the most effective digital therapeutic in the world does nothing if a patient doesn’t know it exists, or a doctor doesn’t know they can prescribe it.
For marketing and communications around digital therapeutics today, awareness is the watchword – pharma marketeers have to get the word out about not only their particular product, but often about the whole category of digital therapeutics.
“I would say one of the biggest challenges, assuming that there’s a reimbursement pathway and you can get paid, is just awareness of these solutions,” Kristin Milburn, managing director of Healthware Labs, says. “And I do think that there needs to be an industry-wide effort to help educate both patients – and maybe physicians even more to start – about what are DTx and what is available in their therapeutic area. Because until they are aware of them, they’re never going to recommend them, obviously, to their patients.”
Healthware Labs partners with digital health start-ups and pharma companies to encourage digital innovation in healthcare. Milburn says the need to educate around digital therapeutics isn’t something that should take pharma by surprise.
“If you think about it, pharma spends a ton of money – and have since medicines were first developed – in doing market shaping and educating around specific new treatment modalities. This is no different. You can’t expect to create an entirely new category of solutions without educating broadly around what those kinds of solutions are.”
Read the full Deep Dive article at pharmaphorum.com
A 20+ year veteran of consulting and digital marketing, Kristin Milburn’s experience has had a consistent focus on healthcare and technology and the intersection of the two. She is a strategic and innovative thinker, who has held leadership roles in strategy/planning and client engagement at various digital firms with numerous Fortune 100 pharmaceutical and technology clients.
Kristin is now the Managing Director of Healthware Labs. Healthware Labs is our innovation consultancy helping our clients navigate and innovate within the everchanging world of digital health, remote patient monitoring, telemedicine, digital therapeutics and beyond.
