Paving the Way for the Low-/No-Code Development of Digital Therapeutics: The DTxTAPP Framework

Digital Therapeutics (DTx) are considered primarily patient-facing software applications that promise personalized behavioral treatments whenever and where needed. In recent years, the DTx market has seen strong growth due to reforms promoting the digital transformation of national healthcare systems, leading to competitive pressure among vendors and shorter times to market. To accelerate the development of DTx and deal with their complexity, so-called low-/no-code platforms that build on the ideas of model-driven engineering have moved into the focus of research and practice. However, research regarding the generic development of DTx is still in its infancy, and prior contributions mainly focused on specific modeling and development aspects. Following a design science research approach, a synergized framework is derived based on previous conceptualizations to provide a holistic view on DTx intervention modeling. The proposed framework describes how the intervention workflow modeling can be systematically structured, may help to organize existing intervention knowledge, and provides the foundation for a technical instantiation. After demonstrating the framework, implications for future research and practice are discussed.