We’re shining a spotlight on our Clinical Development Lead, Malika Bouazzaoui, who will be attending Futurescot’s Health & Care Transformation in Glasgow, Scotland on 30th March.
We talked to Malika about digital therapeutics and her role at ieso.
Hi Malika. Can you tell us about your career background andyour role at ieso?
My background is in Mental Health Digital Therapeutics, where I have been in different roles across the product lifecycle. This has ranged from understanding patients’ unmet needs to building a minimum viable product with clinical and engineering teams, running studies to improve the product and submit evidence to regulators and finally, selling to healthcare providers and payers and training their clinical staff to use and recommend mental health digital therapeutics. I have worked in both the US and the UK, in companies of every size.
At ieso, my role has been to bring my expertise of patient, customer and regulator expectations to product development and is now to test our digital programme for the first time with patients. I also lead our diversity and inclusion work and ensure that the patient voice is included at every step.
What most interests you about digital mental healthcare?
My main interest lies in the fact that nobody has cracked the code yet. The field is still very new, and we are working with state-of-the-art technology to solve problems of access and efficacy that have plagued the field for decades. I am very passionate about making mental health treatment more suited to people who are from different cultures, or who are neurodiverse, for example. I am interested in offering mental health support for people who would not have gone to see a therapist in person anyway, people who don’t think it is for them. Rather than trying to convince them that it is, I am interested in asking “What would a solution that is tailored to you look like?”. People answer with vastly different responses and digital is only part of the solution.
I am also interested in the digital therapeutics field because anyone who uses a product that I have developed the clinical content for, or ran studies to evidence, is an early adopter. It is fascinating to notice how quickly the field is changing, but also how challenging it is to operate in a regulated medical device space and show value for everyone: the patients, the clinicians who triage or recommend the digital programme and the customers who buy it. In choosing to engage with digital therapeutics, they are all pioneers.
And finally, you'll be speaking at Health & CareTransformation in Scotland next week. What can audience members expect to learnfrom your Masterclass session?
My goal for this Masterclass is to educate and upskill about the power of technology when it comes to mental health. Technology is not just about scale and reaching more people. It can also be about the data that helps us understand what aspect of therapy is important to improve mental health outcomes; or about delivering therapy that is less biased and stigmatising than it can be with a clinician.
In particular, I will focus on best practices and innovative ways of developing products in responsible ways. I will share how ieso has gone above and beyond to bring the patient to the centre of everything we do, in the way we develop our products, the ethical oversight of our studies, and how we talk about our digital programme.
I will also share an in-depth case study about risk management for digital therapeutics, and what patients have told us they need. This will be an opportunity for a deep dive into patients’ needs and expectations when it comes to safety with digital therapeutics in the real world and in a study setting.
Bring your experience and your questions, I hope to see you there!
If you’re also attending Health & Care Transformation and would like to meet Malika, or any of her colleagues who will also be in attendance, including Arif Hussain, Jenni Lyall, Ron Hogg and MarcusVice, and learn more about their work with ieso, get in touch at events@iesohealth.com.
