Since the beginning of 2022, a number of international digital therapy star companies Pear Therapeutics, Akili Interactive, Hinge Health, Noom Health, and Better Therapeutics have successively reported that they have completed or are about to complete their IPOs.
In contrast, in the domestic market, although digital therapy ranks first in the emerging innovative medical segment in 2021, how to verify the innovative value of products and establish a suitable business model is still the most urgent difficulty for major digital therapy companies to solve. But that can't stop the development of digital therapy. If the trend is strong, the first to come wins.
After several years of research and development and clinical research, the "Shukang" APP independently developed by Chengdu Shangyi Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as its brand "Shukang") passed the APPROVAL of the NmPA of the State Drug Administration in November 2020, becoming the pioneer of "digital therapy"; the international version of "Shukang" has been adopted as a first-line treatment method in authoritative hospitals in the United States, and passed the EU CE certification in October 2021.
As the world's first digital therapy software for sports prescriptions, for seven years, Shukang has continuously created the "First in China" of digital therapy and continuously built its own "professional barriers".
Three major sectors of digital therapy,
Covers seven disease types
According to the classification of the "China Digital Therapy White Paper 2.0", according to the first-level indications, the adaptation diseases of digital therapy can be divided into eight major types: respiratory diseases, nervous system diseases, endocrine, nutritional and metabolic disorders, circulatory system diseases, psychiatric, behavioral and cognitive disorders, ophthalmic system diseases, tumor diseases and other diseases.
At present, the international digital therapy star enterprises such as Akili Interactive and Hinge Health are almost all concentrated in a single first-level indication to develop products, and they are basically helpless in the face of some chronic diseases with multiple complications in the middle and late stages. The three major digital therapy sections of heart-lung + muscle and bone exercise therapy, cognitive training and nutritional therapy in The "Digital Therapy System" of Shukang can cover the seven major disease types in addition to the diseases of the ophthalmic system.
Based on the existing evidence-based medical evidence, Shukang presents traditional exercise tests, basic principles of exercise prescription and sports rehabilitation video guidance through smart phone software, and matches smart wearable devices to realize the functions of remote home exercise treatment (patients) and remote guidance exercise (doctors) of Shukang APP.
As the world's first sports prescription digital therapy software, Shukang APP takes cardiopulmonary endurance improvement as the core, exercise assessment and treatment of chronic diseases, and can be used for the treatment and prevention of almost all chronic diseases related to decreased cardiopulmonary endurance, including common endocrine metabolic diseases, cardiovascular diseases, tumors, some respiratory diseases and at least 26 kinds of chronic diseases, including hypertension, diabetes, hyperuricemia, metabolic syndrome, chronic heart failure, coronary heart disease, atrial fibrillation, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and post-discharge interventions for COVID-19 patients.
Taking atrial fibrillation as an example, patients may have many discomforts in the short term after surgery, cardiopulmonary function and exercise tolerance will be significantly reduced, home exercise therapy is a positive treatment method, the current due to conditions, the patient's exercise therapy can only be completed by medical staff in the hospital for 1 to 1 guidance. However, the energy consumption, economic consumption and time cost of patients traveling to and from the hospital are high, which often leads to patients abandoning rehabilitation treatment when their condition improves slightly, and once the patient is lost, the treatment effect is greatly reduced.
The Shukang APP can carry out remote intelligent assessment, personalized exercise program, exercise prescription video training, remote training guidance, full data monitoring, intelligent quantitative follow-up for patients' specific conditions and health conditions, and is not limited by time and space, which can reduce the cost of patient medical treatment, greatly improve patient compliance, and also make it more convenient for doctors to supervise the implementation of patients' exercise prescriptions, extending the management boundaries of doctors and improving the accessibility of medical services.
In fact, the development and application experience of Shukang APP has thus become the cornerstone of Shukang's entire digital treatment system. As the first digital therapy product of Shukang, the underlying development logic of the Shukang APP can be seen as a template, so that the technology can be accumulated and expanded outward from this product - deriving the two major plates and many pipelines of "nutritional science" and "cognitive training".
In 2018, Shukang Intelligent Nutrition Science began to exert efforts to realize the whole process from "screening-evaluation-nutritional treatment", while reducing the workload of medical staff, and achieving early detection and early treatment of diseases. Its exclusive patent "R+ Shukang Intelligent Dietitian" has carried out nearly 10 nutrition-related clinical studies in Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, and West China Affiliated Hospital of Sichuan University, and is currently applying for Class II medical device certification.
The "Shukang Cognitive Training" section is composed of international brain development experts, neurologists and first-class IT teams, and the cognitive training products developed by Shukang are mainly aimed at the treatment of children's ADHD and other problems and brain function improvement, and will be developed for cognitive decline diseases in the future. At present, Shukang has carried out research related to the "Education and Scientific Research Cooperation Project" in primary schools in Chengdu, and the clinical research on "Digital Diagnosis and Treatment of Children's Brain Function" jointly carried out with Henan Children's Hospital is also being carried out simultaneously.
Previously, the success of the Shukang APP in NMPA was approved, which gave people reason to believe that the R&D, clinical and approval experience accumulated by Shangyi could be quickly reproduced into the new pipeline and bypass many detours.
Full coverage of the scene, high clinical reliability
Different from other chronic disease management software on the market, the Shukang APP can provide patients with exercise therapy services as a sports prescription, with independent efficacy.
Unlike the traditional drugs that remain basically unchanged after the successful development of the drug itself, the treatment plan provided by digital therapy is based on big data and algorithms that are constantly "upgraded, iterated and evolved", which can bring better prognosis to patients, and its most subversive value is reflected in the efficacy.
Taking diabetes as an example, there are 463 million diabetics in the world and 116 million in China. The limited number of healthcare staff is unable to intervene throughout the self-management of all patients. Even if there are sufficient medical resources, manual intervention is costly and inefficient.
In the clinical study of "The Effect of Exercise under Remote Monitoring on Patients with Type 2 Diabetes" carried out by Shukang and West China Hospital of Sichuan University, after three months of monitoring exercise with Shukang APP and heart rate band, the drug withdrawal and drug reduction rate reached 30%, of which 4 people stopped the drug and 9 people reduced the drug dose.
In the conventional exercise group, the rate of drug withdrawal and reduction was only 7.1%, of which 1 person stopped the drug, 2 people reduced the drug dose, and even 5 people increased the drug dose. The overall drug withdrawal and drug reduction rate in the APP group was 4.2 times that of the conventional group, and the average reduction rate of glycosylated hemoglobin and body fat rate in the APP group was higher than that in the conventional group.
This means that the Shukang APP can not only effectively stabilize and reduce sugar, but also greatly save its medical expenses, and build a low-cost, high-efficiency, and wide-coverage service output. As a prescription digital therapy product, Shukang APP not only supports patients to carry out exercise therapy in the hospital, but also applies to remote home scenes outside the hospital, realizing the true meaning of "extension of diagnosis and treatment time and space".
In addition, when the new crown pneumonia epidemic swept the world, the emergence of Shukang made us happy to see the solutions from Chinese digital therapies in the domestic and foreign markets.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic in 2019, the US medical team has urgently applied the Shukang APP to patients with mild covid-19 and the improvement of cardiopulmonary endurance and the recovery of cardiopulmonary function in patients with mild covid-19 and patients discharged from the hospital with new coronary pneumonia, and the treatment results have been remarkable.
In April 2020, Professor Li Jian'an, a Chinese rehabilitation leader, led a clinical study on the effect of remote monitoring exercise on the efficacy of patients discharged from the hospital with new coronary pneumonia, and Shukang was used as the only treatment software. The study divided the registered COVID-19 discharged patients into a regular exercise group and an APP intervention group. The intervention group used the Shukang APP and its heart rate belt to carry out remote home exercise treatment, monitoring and follow-up, while the routine exercise group carried out autonomous exercise according to exercise guidance.
The results of the study showed that compared with the conventional exercise group, the average distance of 6 minutes of walking performed by the APP intervention group in response to the heart and lungs was 588.4 meters, close to the average level of 624 meters for healthy people of the same age, an average increase of 15%, and the improvement effect was significant, the average level of static lung function test was increased by 5.79%, while the conventional exercise group not only did not improve, but decreased by 0.09%; the average lower limb muscle endurance of the APP intervention group was increased by 90%, and the average improvement of the conventional exercise group was only 22.2%. The results of the study proved that the research effect of Shukang digital therapy exceeded expectations.
Over the years, Shukang has conducted as many as 40 clinical studies related to exercise therapy and nutrition with more than 30 tertiary hospitals across the country, including the General Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army and the West China Hospital of Sichuan University. It has been used for stable coronary heart disease, postoperative PCI, type 2 diabetes, obesity, chronic knee osteoarthritis, diabetes, gout and hyperuricemia sports rehabilitation research.
The market value is verified,
The first advantage builds barriers
Shukang APP not only has a remarkable effect in clinical research, but also its real-world value has been verified. In November 2019, the international version of Shukang APP entered the US market, and was immediately used by HCA, one of the largest medical groups in the United States, and Baylor Medical Center for the rehabilitation of heart failure patients, reducing the 30-day readmission rate of heart failure patients from 17.8% to 2.1%. In November 2020, Dr. More than 4,000 heart failure patients in Satjit Bhusri have begun to use the international version of the Shukang APP for home rehabilitation.
Commercial medical insurance is the main body of medical insurance in the United States, and the Artcomb APP has cooperated with BlueCross, one of the American medical insurance companies. In addition, the corresponding treatment insurance payment list of the Shukang APP in baylor medical centers, HCA and other large medical institutions in the United States has also been implemented. This means that the Shukang APP has been recognized by mainstream medical institutions and insurance companies in the United States.
Shukang APP makes full use of remote home exercise treatment management methods, which can not only help patients save time costs, economic costs, and be easier to adhere to, but also help doctors achieve the transformation from the traditional "1 to 1" to "1 to many" mode, and the management efficiency can be increased by more than 10 times, effectively saving human resources and medical costs. It is reported that at present, Shangyi has reached cooperation with more top medical institutions in the United States to carry out clinical research related to remote home exercise treatment using the Shukang APP, and the FDA's declaration and certification work is also in progress.
The United States is undoubtedly the fastest growing market for digital therapy, and China is the market with the largest growth space for digital therapy. Looking at the digital therapy industry at home and abroad, there are only a few digital therapy companies that occupy a place in both major markets in China and the United States. Shukang APP has taken the lead in obtaining NMPA certification and EU CE certification, and has taken the lead in commercialization in the United States, and these events have also become a huge advantage of Shangyi.
On the long-distance track of digital therapy, Shukang is promoting the research and development and landing of digital therapy products at a sprint speed, and moving forward.
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