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The Dawn of Digital Therapeutics
A techno-optimistic attitude tells us we’re living at an inflexion point where care practices are being transformed by technology. Monitoring and attending to health and well-being are no longer activities bound within physical spaces like hospitals and clinics; these activities have extended to the basic functions of smart phones. A new labor force has emerged for this digitized health transformation utilizing open source engineering platforms, structuring work into two-week Agile design sprints, and leveraging professionals from traditional healthcare settings. In many ways, the practices of these workers appear synonymous to those of other start-up companies across industry spaces. Throughout ethnographic fieldwork over the last year, I have explored the evolution of this phenomenon within an emergent area of the digital health sphere: Digital therapeutics. (read more...)