Digital health: trends, opportunities and challenges in medical devices, pharma and bio-technology

Digital health interventions refer to the use of digital technology and connected devices to improve health outcomes and healthcare delivery. This includes telemedicine, electronic health records, wearable devices, mobile health applications, and other forms of digital health technology. To this end, several research and developmental activities in various fields are gaining momentum. For instance, in the medical devices sector, several smart biomedical materials and medical devices that are digitally enabled are rapidly being developed and introduced into clinical settings. In the pharma and allied sectors, digital health-focused technologies are widely being used through various stages of drug development, viz. computer-aided drug design, computational modeling for predictive toxicology, and big data analytics for clinical trial management. In the biotechnology and bioengineering fields, investigations are rapidly growing focus on digital health, such as omics biology, synthetic biology, systems biology, big data and personalized medicine. Though digital health-focused innovations are expanding the horizons of health in diverse ways, here the development in the fields of medical devices, pharmaceutical technologies and biotech sectors, with emphasis on trends, opportunities and challenges are reviewed. A perspective on the use of digital health in the Indian context is also included.