Empowering Patients with Digital Therapeutics w/ Sidekick's Tryggvi Thorgeirsson | HealthBiz Briefs

Digital therapeutics have experienced both significant promise and industry failures in equal measure.

That being said, according to a recent PWC report, research found that more than half of patients are willing to use digital therapeutics and that more than 56% of doctors are recommending them to their patients.

The need for digital therapeutics is clearly there, and patients are increasingly looking for personalized care.

In this episode of HealthBiz Briefs, Dr. Tryggvi Thorgeirsson, CEO of Sidekick, discusses how they’re reinvigorating digital therapeutics with AI, personalized care, and new strategies for empowering patients.

This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://betterhelp.com/caretalk and get on your way to being your best self.

As a BetterHelp affiliate, we may receive compensation from BetterHelp if you purchase products or services through the links provided.

🎙️⚕️ABOUT CARETALK
CareTalk is a weekly podcast that provides an incisive, no B.S. view of the US healthcare industry. Join co-hosts John Driscoll (President U.S. Healthcare and EVP, Walgreens Boots Alliance) and David Williams (President, Health Business Group) as they debate the latest in US healthcare news, business and policy.

🎙️⚕️ ABOUT TRYGGVI THORGEIRSSON
Dr. Tryggvi Thorgeirsson, Sidekick's CEO and co-founder, brings a unique blend of medical expertise and engineering knowledge to his role. An accomplished physician and researcher, Thorgeirsson also serves as a guest lecturer at Harvard and MIT, where he speaks on data-driven health and the application of behavioral economics to lifestyle interventions. Additionally, he chairs Iceland’s Technology Innovation Fund and provides strategic advice to the government on innovation and implementation.

🎙️⚕️ ABOUT SIDEKICK HEALTH
The major challenge facing global healthcare systems today is effectively supporting and treating individuals with multiple lifestyle-related diseases. Addressing this issue, Sidekick offers a multi-chronic digital care platform designed to scale product development across all major chronic conditions. Founded by two medical doctors with extensive experience in treating patients with lifestyle-related chronic diseases, Sidekick's vision was to create a technology-driven solution that integrates gamification principles with scientific research and behavioral economics. This approach aims to maximize patient engagement and improve health outcomes through innovative, evidence-based care.

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#healthcare #healthcarepodcast #digitaltherapeutics #healthcareAI #personalizedcare #accesstocare #healthcaretech

Transcript

0:06

This episode of Care Talk is brought to you by BetterHelp. If you've been thinking about starting therapy, there's never been a better time to give it a try. BetterHelp offers online therapy that's accessible, flexible, and tailored to your needs. Whether you're dealing with stress, anxiety, or just looking for personal growth, BetterHelp connects you with licensed therapists who can support you on your journey to becoming your best self. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp .com slash care talk to get 10 % off your first month and take the first step toward improving your mental wellbeing. That's betterhelp, H -E -L -P dot com slash care talk. Welcome to Health Biz Briefs. I'm David Williams, president of Health Business Group here with Dr. Trig V. Thorgerson, CEO of Sidekick Health, a fast growing maker of digital health solutions designed to empower patients and personalize their care. Welcome, Frigvi. Thank you, Digital therapeutics have shown a lot of promise, but there's also been a number of commercial failures. Is Sidekick different? Yes, I would have to say we're quite different. And just on that in general, I'd say digital health and digital therapeutics, I feel we've shown we can build as an industry, we can build great products significantly better than, let's say, the first generations that we saw in digital health. We've proven through clinical trials, we can have a huge impact. I mean, we, for example, are seeing up to 40 % less ER visits, 60 % less hospitalization for chemotherapy side effects, and thousands of dollars in cost of care savings for, for example, our health insurance partners. So I think we've proven products and impact. And now it's about proving that we can really get this to scale. Some of the commercial problems you've mentioned have been fairly specific. For example, What we saw, unfortunately, with paratherapeutics in the US prescription digital therapeutics market, that's not a market that we are currently working in. We're working directly with health insurance companies in the US, which is a really exciting and fast growing market. But in the prescription space, we're working in Germany, where we see quite a different infrastructure, where we've seen very healthy growth. And we're coming up on 100 ,000 reimbursed therapies prescribed and reimbursed therapies there. And in terms of also how we're different, I one of, think our core differences is that we have a platform that's being applied across dozens of the major chronic conditions as opposed to a point solution that just does one or two or three individual things. You recently acquired a company in Germany called Pink. Why did you do that? Yeah, good question too. So actually last year we started out by acquiring another company in Germany called A -tier. They had built a fantastic product, which I believe is the world's most prescribed obesity therapy, achieving up to 27 % weight loss and not only a great product, but very strong sales and marketing channels into the German prescription digital therapy market. And it's a very big market and growing very fast, 75 % growth per year in that market. And so we bought that company, integrated that fantastic team into our business. And now another company called Pink founded by a very passionate clinician, Pia Wolfing, who's been working in breast cancer as a clinician and physician for over 20 years, achieving fantastic outcomes in reducing psychological distress and reducing side effects and increasing quality of life for people with breast cancer. So taking that product, bringing that into the same and strong sales channels and marketing and distribution channels that we've built up with the previous A -care team made just a lot of sense to us. growing faster with those two products and building four additional products into those same channels. And soon, hopefully expanding into other countries as well. What is the role of artificial intelligence in the sidekick business? I mean, I guess like with every company, it touches on every aspect of what we do. I mean, both internally, all of our development is being augmented by AI. So co -pilots, of course, for our developers and designers and all of our content creation. But, but you know, if we look at how it is influencing our users, I mean, it allows us to just even more deeply personalized therapy. So we can really tailor your therapy. If you have whether you have one or if you have two, three different conditions, tying that all into one journey, that's deeply personalized for you and using AI to do that. But also because we work so closely with clinicians, have nurse care managers and dietitians and others who are using our care portal to remotely support their users. And through AI, go through all the previous data, all the chat history, and suggest the best next action for our clinical users, and even create a suggested message, which can be adapted to the right reading level, to the right tone of voice, right language, of course, all through AI. So really exciting to see, and of course, exciting to see how fast this is happening. Well, that's it for the latest Health Biz Brief. If you like what you hear, check out my Health Biz Podcast for a full -length interview with Trigvi about his life and career. Dr. Trig V. Thorgeson, CEO of Sidekick Health. Thanks for joining me today on Health Biz Briefs. My pleasure. Thank you, David.