• Global burden of mental illness accounts for one third of overall years lived with disability worldwide.
• New collaboration aims to improve development of digital mental health technologies as far as standards for safety and privacy, cybersecurity, clinical effectiveness, user experience / adherence and data integration.
• First project of the collaboration to develop a new prescription Digital Therapeutic to treat Major Depressive Disorder – both as a standalone and a combination therapy – has been started

daVinci Digital Therapeutics srl www.davincidtx.com and Valerio Rosso, MD www.valeriorosso.com today announce collaboration focused on Research and Development of new Digital Therapeutics for mental health.

First project of the collaboration concerns the development of a new prescription Digital Therapeutic to treat Major Depressive Disorder, both as a standalone treatment and combination with a specific antidepressant drug.
Under the terms of collaboration, development of new Digital Therapeutics will be based on most effective approaches to treat common mental disorders, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Motivational Interviewing and Psychoeducation.
The development will follow the new standards of data safety and privacy, cybersecurity, clinical effectiveness, user experience / adherence and data integration recently published¹.
The daVinci Digital Therapeutics platform for mental health disorders and user interface will be developed in collaboration with a leading technological institute to include digital assistant solutions powered by Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing.
Subsequent projects will involve the development of new digital therapies for diseases such as Panic Attacks, Eating Disorders, ADHD and Autism.
Depression is the world’s largest health problem, accounting for more disability than any other disease worldwide and a major contributor to the global epidemic of chronic diseases².
Recent data shows that the global burden of mental illness accounts for 32.4% of years lived with disability (YLDs) and 13.0% of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), placing mental illness a distant first in global burden of disease in terms of YLDs, at the same level with cardiovascular and circulatory diseases in terms of DALYs³.

This collaboration will allow addressing some of the major barriers to mental health treatment, i.e. access and stigma – said Valerio Rosso, MD – Digital Therapeutics are based on randomized clinical trial evidence and represent probably the most advanced therapeutic option to treat chronic diseases. Digital Therapeutics for mental diseases may improve clinical outcomes at much lower costs for patients and healthcare providers.

References
1. J.Torous et al. Towards a consensus around standards for smartphone apps and digital mental health. World Psychiatry 2019; 18:1
2. J. Murrough. Addressing Depression: The World’s Largest Health Problem. Psychiatric Times July 31, 2018 www.psychiatrictimes.com
3. D.Vigo, G.Thornicroft, R.Atun. Estimating the true global burden of mental illness. Lancet Psychiatry, 2016; 3(2):171-8