The Research Society for The Study of Diabetic in India (RSSDI) has partnered with Wellthy Therapeutics, a digital therapeutics company focused on improving diabetes care and outcomes through artificial intelligence. Wellthy Diabetes is an artificial intelligence powered diabetes health coach for patients and a virtual clinical assistant for doctors. This is a first of its kind RSSDI endorsement for an application that can be prescribed by doctors to patients.
The partnership was announced at the recently concluded annual RSSDI conference held in Hyderabad. Over the last 20 years, billions of dollars have been spent on pharma and med device research. Yet at the same time, the average blood sugar levels have remained the same, while the number of diabetics in India have tripled from 20 million in 1995 to 70m in 2015. India is home to 17 per cent of the world’s diabetics. With an estimated 80 million pre-diabetics, as well, India holds the infamous title of the “diabetes capital of the world”.
In addition to medicines, it is behaviour change and lifestyle modification coupled with continual care that holds the key to long term control of diabetes and prevention of its complications. Lack of infrastructure, overworked doctors, high cost of delivering this care and an already large annual burden of cost on diabetic patients are challenges that must be overcome to deliver this to every diabetic Indian. Artificial intelligence makes this possible.
During this multi-year partnership, Wellthy Therapeutics and RSSDI, will work together to develop and deploy care protocols and guidelines for lifestyle and behavioural modifications for diabetes patients in India, and to enable real time decision support for doctors. Wellthy Therapeutics will offer the diabetes prescription app for all doctors who are members of RSSDI to prescribe to their patients, customised to their individual practice.
RSSDI and Wellthy Therapeutics together will publish research on lifestyle and behavioural data of diabetes patients - with an aim to present insights into the patients’ life by creating Asia’s largest database of lifestyle and behavioural data from diabetic patients. Within this partnership, they will also be conducting workshops both online and offline to help every doctor’s practice enable continual care digitally.
Abhishek Shah, co-founder & CEO, Wellthy Therapeutics said, “On India’s 70th Independence year, we take the pledge to help 70 million diabetics by enabling 24/7 continual care for them. Using artificial Intelligence and smartphone applications to enhance a doctor’s practice, we make lifestyle modification prescribable to every patient, and continual everyday diabetes care affordable and accessible to the vast majority of India. We are excited to announce our one of a kind partnership with the RSSDI, to empower every doctor’s practice in India, and to collaborate on landmark research initiatives to help all healthcare stakeholders in their quest to control diabetes.”
Dr. Sarita Bajaj, president RSSDI (2016-17) said, “Behavioural change in diabetes focused on lifestyle modification, coupled with enabling affordable continued care are powerful weapons to fight and control diabetes in India. The Wellthy Therapeutics user friendly mobile application using artificial intelligence aspires to empower doctors with the ability to prescribe diabetes care. Things that a doctor always wanted to do in terms of interaction and education to patients now seems possible and readily available. It may just be the prescription required to help patients manage their day-to-day problems related to diabetes.”