ECNP New Frontiers Meeting in Digital Health
10-11 March 2019
The ECNP New Frontiers Meeting in Digital Health 2019 was dedicated to the role of digital medicine in therapy development for brain disorders.
One of the most famous quotes attributed to Charles Darwin is, “it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
In a world in which there are more mobile phones than cars, in which our memories – and medical records – reside in the cloud, in which 3D printing makes it possible to print organs that can then be implanted, in which artificial intelligence and big data allow us to do things that were unthinkable just a decade ago, and in which medical e-visits are becoming the rule rather than the exception, we need to make sure that we get the best that digital medicine has to offer to patients with brain disorders. The digital (and very much App) economy in health care is already here, and digital tools designed for brain disorders are at the forefront of this boom. It should now be clear that they are here to stay – and transforming rapidly.
Clinical trials have recently been published in depression, anxiety, eating disorders, schizophrenia, Alzheimer´s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and many other brain disorders comparing internet tools (online CBT, psychoeducation, symptom monitoring, etc.) to standard care with promising results. The FDA has approved an antipsychotic with a sensor that digitally tracks whether patients have ingested their medication, which may improve adherence but will surely increase measurement adherence in clinical trials.
Many papers have been published, talks given, and money invested in the area of big data in mental health and brain disorders. However, enthusiasm for the changes that digital medicine will bring about should be tempered by the recognition that, at present, we are still at the stage where there is abundant exuberance and excessive hype. There is a clear need to apply the same stringent criteria to digital medicine that we apply to drugs in RCTs in order to gather evidence-based information about real effectiveness.
Topics
The ECNP New Frontiers Meeting in Digital Health 2019 aimed to address these needs by focusing on the following topics:
- EU projects on digital technology
- Regulatory, patient/family association and ethical perspective on digital medicine
- Innovative use of digital medicine
Who is this meeting for?
Representatives from IT, pharma and medical devices industry, regulators, and patient and family associations may attend this meeting to discuss different points of view on the opportunities and risks that digital medicine implies for treatment development for brain disorders.
Read the report of the 2019 meeting here.
