Yonsei University Health System (YUHS) recently held a performance report session for its "Digital Therapeutics Industry Promotion and Global Expansion Support Project."
At the session, YUHS shared the results of operating its open platform, "CONNECT DTx," which allows doctors to prescribe digital therapeutics and other digital medical devices. Over the 4 years and 6 months that the project was led by YUHS, Severance Hospital, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital and Gachon University Gil Hospital were among the institutions that prescribed digital therapeutics and digital medical devices.
In particular, public hospitals such as National Health Insurance Service Ilsan Hospital and Seoul Metropolitan Government Boramae Medical Center were also connected, creating a prescription environment that extends to public medical institutions.
In 2022, YUHS was selected as an institution supported by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy for the Digital Therapeutics Industry Promotion and Global Expansion Support Project. YUHS then took the lead in developing and distributing CONNECT DTx, a platform that enables prescriptions for digital therapeutics and other devices directly from hospital Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems.
Previously, medical staff had to access separate websites or dashboards for each product to prescribe digital therapeutics or check treatment results. CONNECT DTx links products from multiple companies with hospital EMR systems, allowing prescriptions to be issued directly from the treatment screen. Doctors can also review patients' usage results and determine the next course of treatment, including future prescriptions.
The project was led by Im Joon-seok, head of the Digital Health Center at YUHS and a radiologist, and Lee Eun, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Severance Hospital. It was designed to achieve three goals: establish a standard process for DTx development; build an open, interoperable platform linking DTx prescriptions with OCS/EMR systems; and provide a full-cycle support service portal.
A total of 27 digital therapeutics and digital medical devices have been connected through the platform, and the number of prescriptions had reached about 3,300 by midyear, during the project support period. The platform initially focused on digital therapeutics, but later expanded to include digital medical devices as well. Forty-two percent of major general hospitals in the Seoul metropolitan area, including Severance Hospital, have adopted the platform. Adoption is also expanding to clinics, and the indications now include insomnia, mild cognitive impairment and thyroid eye disease.
One representative digital therapeutic product helps improve patients' cognitive function through game-based training on a smartphone app that builds memory and concentration. One digital medical device analyzes eye images taken with a smartphone to help assess disease activity in thyroid eye disease.
For example, when a patient with mild cognitive impairment is prescribed a digital therapeutic, the patient uses the app at home for 12 weeks to complete a cognitive training program before returning to the hospital for treatment.
Based on these achievements, more than 50 people, including principal investigators from partner research institutions, project staff, participating medical institutions and company representatives, attended the session and continued discussions on the future development of CONNECT DTx.
Im Joon-seok, head of the Digital Health Center at YUHS, said, "The platform built under YUHS' leadership is the first case in Korea of linking medical institutions with digital therapeutics, and it has produced tangible results by leading to actual prescriptions from tertiary hospitals to clinics." He added, "This project goes beyond simply building a platform. It can be seen as creating an efficient environment for patient care through future-oriented treatment devices."
Jang Jong-ho, Sportschosun
This article has been translated by GripLabs Mingo AI.
