Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

Here’s a rule for storytellers. 

Step into the shoes of your audience. 

It sounds simple, I know. But some of the most incredible breakthroughs in storytelling happen when the storyteller breaks into the minds, hearts, and lives of the audience. Putting yourself in their shoes is the first step in doing that. And if the connection is well-intentioned, your audiences will respond. 

A case in point is digital therapeutics. 

It’s not medicine. In fact, it works primarily through an app on your phone. But the industry claims to have healed (or at least managed) a range of chronic conditions like diabetes, and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. We’ll get into some of the claims and studies later, but the market numbers for digital therapeutics are too significant to ignore. 

Reports published last month put the size of the global digital therapeutics market at over US$3 billion in 2021, and forecast a compounded annual growth rate of nearly 30% between 2022 and 2028. Companies in the sector have also raised hundreds of millions of dollars globally over the past few years. 

And in India last week, four-year-old Bangalore-based healthtech startup Phable—which had raised over US$24 million in a fresh round in March—presented clinical studies at two conferences that claim to show digital therapy works. 

Let’s see how. 

Storytelling lessons from digital therapy

In one of the most popular books on applying storytelling principles to branding—Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen—American author Donald Miller makes an observation. Most successful brands, he says, are mentors. Not heroes. That latter role is left for the audience to fill. 

It is a classic narrative distinction. In the standard ‘hero’s journey’ story format, the mentor helps the hero make decisions, overcome reluctance, and nudges them on the journey they need to take. 

However, brands often tend to take over the role of the hero, shifting the spotlight away from the customers. But it’s the customer who’s supposed to be the hero, according to Miller; with the brand as the mentor—nudging the hero forward.

It’s this latter role that digital therapeutics plays for its ‘patients’. 

But what is it? And how does it work?

Well, here’s an excerpt from a 2019 The Ken story, when pharma major Cipla made its first investment in digital therapeutics by acquiring a minority stake in a startup called Wellthy: