Shaheen Lakhan: This whole landscape of incretins and these neural hormones affecting weight loss, we're finding that they're neuroprotective, they're cardio protective. So we're just, as an industry, uncovering almost the statin-like effect – it's not just going to be cardiometabolic. But when you have so many targets, you need to have the right tools to mine that, a digital type of intervention that buttresses not just the weight loss, but also the cognitive function, the cardiovascular risk, movement disorders, I could go on and on. So this personalized digital medicine, we have pharma companies asking, pleading or demanding for this to happen. And at every phase: one, identification of the patients of interest. It shouldn't be a one-size-fit-all. One classic agent cannot possibly at a single dose be applied to everyone at different weights, at different ages, at different locations, different comorbidities. But then too, when you're on it, when you're titrating, you need to have those biomarkers that are constantly measuring not just the weight functions, but it could be your body physique, your physical type, your lean muscle mass – you know, things that are actually plaguing practitioners who are prescribing this. And you're seeing, what's the first thing that you lose? It’s muscle mass before the fat and adipose content. Well, digital interventions can actually buttress that and prevent that from happening.

And then this payer discussion. It might sound counterintuitive that actually we might find that not everyone should be on these agents. In fact, a certain amount of them should be on this particular dose from this manufacturer or this type of agent. Plus they might not need to be continuously dosed. It introduces this idea of drug holidays – you might actually need to have some points of rest. And then you include the digital interventions, the behavioral interventions, maybe some of the neuromodulation, monitor if they're rebounding in terms of weight or the other factors, and then redose at appropriate dose. So these are the things that are actually getting all the stakeholders on board – patients, providers, payers – and they only happen through digital medicine.

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