Table 1. Refutations from the medical field against the advantages of digital therapeutics.

Claims by some industries	Refutations from the medical field
DTx have significantly reduced development time and cost compared to conventional pharmacotherapy.	In the medical field where safety and effectiveness are important, just shortening the development time and cost is not an advantage.
DTx have few side-effects.	The adverse effects of DTx are not yet known and will be found out eventually.
DTx are capable of real-time collection and analysis of RWD.	While it is true that DTx are beneficial for the collection and analysis of RWD, they require new and distinct work for collecting and analyzing high-quality RWD. Naturally, this must be independently proved by scientific methods.
Patients are reluctant toward conventional pharmacotherapy.	Depending on the type of disease, it is not recommended to prescribe DTx even if the patient rejects conventional pharmacotherapy. Prescription of conventional pharmacotherapy is often necessary, and if the prescription of DTx is not adequate, the time for treatment may be missed.
In DTx, the patient collects and manages their data, so the patient is actively involved.	There is no basis for continuity of active participation. Rather, the continuity of DTx use is extremely low.
Once verified in clinical studies, DTx can be applied to the medical field and can be supplemented when problems arise.	While many conventional pharmacotherapies have undergone numerous verification and safety tests over a long period of time, barriers to the application of DTx in the medical field are relatively low.
	Except for some cases, for the time being, an approach is needed that complements the prescription of conventional pharmacotherapy by medical staff.

DTx = digital therapeutics, RWD = real-world data.