#37 - Hacking the dopamine system for good - Tryggvi Thorgeirsson - Sidekick Health

Can the attention economy be harnessed to serve health?

Paradoxical as it may seem, this is the thesis of Tryggvi Thorgeirsson and his team at Sidekick Health.As a medical doctor trained in Iceland in the 2000s, Tryggvi experienced rural medicine firsthand and what working as a general practitioner in a remote setting means.

And he quickly found himself confronted with the limitations posed by the healthcare system at the time:

• Prescribing medications at the expense of other therapies where patients are guided toward healthier behaviors.
• The silos and impossibility of establishing a care plan that simultaneously takes into account multiple conditions.
• A purely reactive approach based on a brick-and-mortar model running out of steam. The emergence of smartphones and their potential as health companions became obvious to him.

Based on this intuition, he co-founded Sidekick Health alongside his fellow physician and colleague Saemundur Oddsson.

The company is now one of the leaders in digital therapeutics, offering a vast portfolio of therapies accessible from each patient's pocket, prescribed by thousands of doctors in Europe and the US. In this episode of Impulse, we talk with Tryggvi about the principles behind how these digital therapies work, how attention levers can be used to support long-term behavior change, and the growing impact these solutions have on individuals and healthcare systems.In the era of social media and the mental plague they represent, this episode brings a refreshing perspective on how dopamine can be used to put the health of individuals back in their own hands.

Timeline:

• 02:35 - Tryggvi's background as a medical doctor and electrical engineer
• 04:05 - What felt missing in Tryggvi's rural medical practice
• 07:14 - Seeing early the potential of smartphones for healthcare
• 11:08 - Tryggvi's definition of digital therapeutics
• 13:44 - The impact of digital therapeutics on clinical outcomes and cost of care
• 16:44 - Driving behavioral change and medical education through timely bite-sized pieces and gamification
• 18:40 - Sidekick Health's approach to designing tailored and impactful digital health programs across multiple conditions
• 27:46 - Putting AI at the center of digital health programs and their usage
• 30:13 - Tryggvi's vision for the future of healthcare

What we also talked about with Tryggvi:

• PINK!
• Prof. Pia Wülfing
• Pear Therapeutics
• Daniel Kahneman
• Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

We cited with Tryggvi some of the past episodes of the series:

• #7 - Redefining motor rehabilitation with digital neurotherapeutics - Naveed Ejaz - MindMaze
• #17 - Coaching as the key to a better health - Eugene Borukhovich - YourCoach.Health
• #30 - Building the Shopify of digital health - Dan Vahdat - Huma

As mentioned by Tryggvi during the episode, we recommend reading Exits & Outcomes by Brian Dolan as well as Second Opinion by Christina Farr, two newsletters that will keep you posted on the latest in digital health.To dive further into the programs and use cases around Sidekick Health's technology, take a look at their website.

You can follow Sidekick Health's activities on LinkedIn and X, and get in touch with Tryggvi via LinkedIn.

If you want to give me feedback on the episode or suggest potential guests, contact me over LinkedIn or via email!

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