Delivering Digital Health Solutions that Patients Need: A Call to Action.

Digital health solutions have the potential to complement traditional healthcare approaches and deliver improved health outcomes, but there are system-wide challenges that need to be addressed. These include fragmentation of the digital health landscape, regulatory processes that lack the agility to accommodate the fast pace of digital health advances, and inadequate transparency around data sharing and data governance. All of these challenges have led to mistrust, limited understanding and sharing of best practices, a lack of digital education and awareness, and insufficient patient and public engagement and involvement. In this paper, we argue that for digital health solutions to fulfil their potential, there needs to be a significant increase in early, meaningful, and sustained engagement with the people they intend to benefit. The uptake as well as the impact of digital solutions created in partnership with patients for patients are greater and more relevant to the communities they address.

Patient Engagement and Patient Experience Data in Regulatory Review and Health Technology Assessment: A Global Landscape Review.

BACKGROUND: Working with patients through meaningful patient engagement (PE) and incorporating patient experience data (PXD) is increasingly important in medicines and medical device development. However, PE in the planning, organization, generation, and interpretation of PXD within regulatory and health technology assessment (HTA) decision-making processes remains challenging. We conducted a global review of the PE and PXD landscape to identify evolving resources by geography to support and highlight the potential of integration of PE and PXD in regulatory assessment and HTA. METHODS: A review of literature/public information was conducted (August 2021-January 2023), led by a multistakeholder group comprising those with lived or professional experience of PE and PXD, to identify relevant regulatory and HTA initiatives and resources reviewed and categorized by geography and focus area. RESULTS: Overall, 53 relevant initiatives/resources were identified (global, 14; North America, 11; Europe, 11; Asia, nine; UK, six; Latin America, one; Africa, one). Most focused either on PE (49%) or PXD (28%); few (11%) mentioned both PE and PXD (as largely separate activities) or demonstrated an integration of PE and PXD (11%). CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis demonstrates increasing interest in PE, PXD, and guidance on their use individually in decision-making. However, more work is needed to offer guidance on maximizing the value of patient input into decisions by combining both PE and PXD into regulatory and HTA processes; the necessity of integrating PE in the design and interpretation of PXD programs should be highlighted. A co-created framework to achieve this integration is part of a future project.