entertainment

In another sign of the business headwinds facing prescription mental health apps, developer Twill will shop around for a pharmaceutical company to market Aspiro, its cognitive behavioral therapy treatment for both generalized anxiety and major depression.

Twill executives told STAT the company hopes that a drugmaker developing or currently marketing a product for generalized anxiety, or GAD, and major depressive disorder, or MDD, will be interested in adding a digital therapeutic to boost the effect of its drug — as well as its sales. Twill’s chief strategy officer Chris Wasden said that after watching companies built around prescription digital therapeutics, or PDTs, stall out, Twill made the decision earlier this year that it would only take the product to market if it found a willing drugmaker to serve as its partner.

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“A PDT is going to be more valuable in the hands of a drug company that has a drug that they would like to get greater adherence [and] greater revenues from rather than trying to get reimbursement for the PDT itself,” he said.

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