Despite contending with the season’s first snowstorm, members of the local, national, and international digital health community made a strong showing at the Fourth Annual Digital Health Summit on December 3. The event, held at Dartmouth College, was hosted by Geisel School of Medicine’s Center for Technology and Behavioral Health (CTBH).
Attendees came together to discuss the expanding field of digital therapeutics (DTx), which deliver medical interventions directly to patients using evidence-based, clinically evaluated software to treat, manage, and prevent a broad spectrum of diseases and disorders. These tools can leverage smartphones, AI, and wearables to tackle chronic conditions, improve patient engagement, lower costs, and extend care beyond clinical settings—offering personalized, data-driven solutions for better health outcomes.
But with these opportunities come many challenges. Attendees considered aspects of both as they examined the scientific, regulatory, policy, payer, industry, and implementation landscapes of their rapidly evolving field.
In her welcome and opening remarks, Lisa Marsch, director of the CTBH and the Andrew G. Wallace Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Biomedical Data Science at Geisel, said, “We’re delighted to once again have the opportunity to bring together leaders and stakeholders in this space, to help create a future where we can leverage digital health tools to tackle some of our biggest healthcare challenges.”
The summit’s morning presentations included: a global perspective on recent developments in DTx, by Andy Molnar, senior vice president and head of Digital Health, American Telemedicine Association (ATA) and ATA Action; reimagining mental health care through digital therapeutics, by Vaile Wright, senior director of Health Care Innovation, American Psychological Association; and using FDA tools to build transparent, accountable GenAI technologies for mental health, by Aubrey Shick, X-FDA, digital health/policy and product strategy consultant, Launch and Logic, LLC.
In addition, promising results from a phase 3 study—showing the benefit of using a digital therapeutic to treat schizophrenia—were shared by Cornelia Dorner-Ciossek, global brand head for Prescription Digital Therapeutics, Boehringer Ingelheim.
In a series of interactive panel discussions that followed, featured guests and audience members discussed topics across several key areas. These included: an overview of the global DTx market landscape, including market trends and business models; the promise of the FDA’s new framework for adding prescription drug use related software (PDURS) to drug labels; and the promise and challenges of AI-enabled DTx and their associated regulatory considerations.
Digital Health Summit Photo Gallery (Photos by Robert Gill):
The summit’s final session provided a snapshot of recent innovations in digital health at CTBH. Paul Barr, associate professor of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, talked about the opportunities and ethical perils of AI powered clinic visit recordings. Marsch and Nicholas Jacobson, associate professor of CTBH, gave an overview of Evergreen—a novel AI-enabled platform developed to help students flourish. And Bethany Soloman, assistant vice president for principal gifts and venture philanthropy at Dartmouth Health and Geisel, discussed building an innovative ecosystem at Dartmouth to drive impact.
In her closing remarks, Marsch thanked all the participants, inviting them to attend the post-event reception and poster session. “As one of our presenters said earlier, ‘I hope today leaves us feeling empowered, confident, and collaborative’ and excited to keep the conversation going. While it’s clear that we have a lot of challenges in healthcare to address, I think that as a community we are well-positioned to meet those challenges in a really impactful way.”
