High-quality medical care has been made possible by excellent medical skills, excellent medicines, and excellent medical equipment. In this medical care, therapeutic apps that are being developed worldwide are attracting attention. First, when we asked Google’s AI about “therapeutic apps for high blood pressure,” we got the following summary. In Japan, the “CureApp HT High Blood Pressure Treatment Support App” is a smartphone app that has been approved as a medical device specialized for high blood pressure treatment and is covered by insurance. This app is prescribed by doctors to patients, and users measure their blood pressure and record their lifestyle habits on their own smartphones, and doctors can understand the patient’s treatment progress through a dedicated management screen and use it for guidance.
On April 26, 2022, CureApp’s hypertension treatment app received pharmaceutical approval from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and became eligible for public medical insurance. A therapeutic app is software intended for treatment that is used on general-purpose devices such as smartphones that have been approved by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare as a medical device. This company is a leading company in the practical application of therapeutic apps in Japan. A therapeutic app that supports hypertension patients on a daily basis instead of doctors is now available. The group of patients who used this therapeutic app saw their blood pressure drop after 12 weeks of treatment. This means that their blood pressure dropped more than the group of patients who received advice from doctors on lifestyle improvements without the app. This app has been proven to reduce the risk of developing vascular diseases in the brain and heart by 11%.
The global trend is toward the spread of “therapeutic apps.” This app is being developed as a “third treatment method” following pharmaceuticals and medical devices. This therapeutic app will encourage patients to eat, exercise, and sleep appropriately. If it can be treated with an app, there is a possibility that dependency on medicine and medical costs will be reduced. The estimated population of hypertension in Japan is about 43 million. The annual medical costs for hypertension are estimated to be about 1.7 trillion yen. This hypertension also increases the risk of stroke and heart disease. As medical costs rise year by year due to the aging population, it is only natural to pursue low costs. Therapeutic apps are effective and have cost advantages. New drugs generally require development periods of more than 10 years and R&D costs of tens to hundreds of billions of yen. Therapeutic apps can be developed in around five years and with R&D costs of a few hundred million yen, less than one-hundredth of the cost. This appears to be the motivation for companies around the world to invest in this “third means of treatment.”
