Digital therapeutics | disrupting.healthcare

NOCD receives $34M funding, investors include Cigna and Kaiser Permanente

NOCD – Company Overview

NOCD is the world’s leading provider of treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Community-Driven Therapy. Founded in 2018, the company aims to help get proper diagnosis and treatment to 180 million people suffering from OCD.

According to NOCD, it takes an average of 17 years for people with OCD to get proper treatment due to high costs and a shortage of specialists. NOCD offers Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) therapy, the most proven OCD treatment, and partners with insurance plans to make it affordable. Inside the NOCD platform, patients can do live video sessions with a licensed ERP therapist, and get support between sessions from self-help tools and peer communities.

About NOCD. Source: Youtube

Stephen Smith – NOCD Founder and CEO

Stephen Smith – NOCD CEO. Source: LinkedIn

NOCD founder, Stephen Smith is himself an OCD patient. It is his own experience in the search for a diagnosis and effective treatment, that has driven him to start NOCD. Listen to the interview with Stephen Smith by Alex Wess from The Pulse by Wharton Digital Health below:

NOCD – Results so far

According to the research data, the Virtual ERP at NOCD Therapy has demonstrated clinically significant outcomes, including a 35% reduction in OCD symptom severity and an over 40% reduction in anxiety, stress, and depression symptoms.

NOCD has been successful in its coverage expansion, it is now available in all 50 States of USA and in the United Kingdom. In the US it is working with main insurance plans. The company assesses, that 2 of 3 US patients would have the service covered.

NOCD has over 300 ERP therapists and is providing more than 20,000 virtual therapy sessions per month. It also offers access to the largest online OCD community with over 100,000 community member engagements per month.

Deprexis DiGA approved! 11th Digital Therapeutics (DTx) reimbursed in Germany

Deprexis – Digital therapeutics (DTx) for depression has received DiGA fast-track approval for DTx prescription and reimbursement in Germany.

The innovative DiGA process allows for fast-track approval of digital therapeutics and is the first such program in the world. It was created by the 2019 Digital Healthcare Act and allows apps to be prescribed by doctors while costs will be reimbursed through German statutory health insurance.

The federal regulator, BfArM, manages DiGA. To get through DiGA, there are certain conditions:

Safety and Suitability for Use confirmed by CE certification as a medical product in the lowest-risk classes
Data Protection Conformity to data protection legislation (EU-wide GDPR and German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG))
Information security Assessment is based on the recommendations of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and specific parts of IT-Grundschutz (ITbasic data protection) catalogs designated for healthcare apps.
Interoperability Related to German central IT standards directory available via online platform vesta, managed by gematik
Availability of preliminary data on the health benefits provided. Data must show that patient-relevant endpoints, in particular morbidity, mortality, or quality of life, are positively influenced.

Check out the full guide for DiGA here.

Results of DTx DiGA assessment as of June 2022. Source: BfArM.

At the time of writing this, there were 59 applications for DiGA listing, 40 for provisional listing, and 19 for the final listing. So far BfArM has approved 11 applications and rejected one. 25 applications have been withdrawn. In theory, the full approval process should take three months.

Deprexis, the 11th DiGA-approved application is interesting on its own. The manufacturer of the app is GAIA Group, an offspring of Airbus which builds its products on a proprietary AI platform called broca^Ⓡ.

Deprexis, Digital Therapeutics (DTx) for depression. Source: GAIA Group AG

The focus here is clearly not on UX, but on medical benefits. Deprexis may not have the nicest UX, but is a proper DTx providing a three-month-long highly individualized Cognitive Behavioral Therapy support program for patients with depression. Application is able to perform a dialogue with the patient, learning from the input on the way. It contains 10 content modules and is available online via desktop and mobile app interface.

Deprexis is backed by clinical data from at least nine studies, one of which had a sample of 3,800 patients, which does not sound much in pharmaceuticals, but it is a lot in DTx. While in Germany it just received reimbursement, in the US the price for treatment is $400 one-time payment, or $540 in three monthly installments of $135 each.