The physician’s leather medical bag will soon need to add another compartment for digital therapeutics or DTx for short. Digital therapeutics are evidence-based, clinically evaluated medical devices or software which, like an app, can be downloaded to your mobile phone. These digital therapies are used to treat a variety of diseases and disorders. Over the past five years the US Food and Drug Administration has approved an increasing amount of prescription DTx which complement more familiar drug therapies. This trend, although more recent, is also becoming more pronounced in Germany.

In decades past most health systems were set up to provide uniform care to large numbers of people. This made economic sense as it allowed health care to benefit from economies of scale.