In 2017, Pear Therapeutics’s reSET digital app to treat patients with substance use disorder became the first FDA-approved PDT, which are software-based therapies to treat medical and behavioral conditions. Since then, the FDA has approved more than 40 DPTs, according to Brandon Aylward, Ph.D., director of digital health for RTI International, a nonprofit research institute.
Still, Medicare does not cover PDTs, while commercial payers and state Medicaid programs have been hesitant to pay for them, as well
“It’s really important not to abstract from this experience that the market is somehow not healthy,” Dan Mendelson, CEO of Morgan Health, the health care investing arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co., tells AIS Health. “With that said, I think that commercializing a new FDA-approved therapy is really challenging, and it’s challenging for new devices and it’s even more challenging for the more innovative categories like digital therapeutics