The Potential of Digital Therapeutics and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia: Yuri Maricich, MD, MBA
The internal medicine physician, and chief medical officer and head of development at Pear Therapeutics discussed the findings of a recent study assessing cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. [WATCH TIME: 4 minutes]
WATCH TIME: 4 minutes
“There’s been a lot of work looking at the importance of—and what is addressed in the clinical guidelines—cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, but unfortunately, the vast majority of patients can’t get access [to it] because there are only 600 clinicians who are trained, and less than 400 who are even certified.”
The use of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to treat insomnia has become a guideline-recommended approach to treating the sleep disorder in recent years. Although, despite success in randomized controlled trials, few studies have been conducted in real-world practice, in part because of slower uptake in the use of this approach in day-to-day care.
Recently, a group of investigators including Yuri Maricich, MD, MBA, internal medicine physician, and chief medical officer and head of development, Pear Therapeutics, published data from a real-world cohort of individuals who utilized the digital therapeutic Somryst (previously known as SHUTi) evaluating healthcare resource utilization, associated costs, and insomnia severity effects of the therapy.1,2
Ultimately, the 24-month assessment revealed reductions in health-related services including emergency department visits (53%), hospitalizations (21%), and hospital outpatient visits (13%), as well as an estimated reduction in per-patient costs eclipsing $2000. Additionally, clinical assessments at 9 weeks compared with baseline showed reductions in mean insomnia severity index (ISI) scores (37.2%), ISI responder status percentages (9%), and rates of insomnia remission (6%).
In a conversation with NeurologyLive®, Maricich shared his perspectives on the motivations for this assessment and the real-world use of these CBT interventions, as well as the importance of the findings.
