Cannabinoids – and medical cannabis – are becoming part of the care mainstream. Evidence suggests that responsibly managed cannabinoid care and guidance can have success in symptom management, inclusive of pain, stress, anxiety, and more.
According to reports, there is no letup in sight for the growth of medical expenses and pharmaceutical utilization. Furthermore, aging populations will increase demand for chronic care, with the cost of pain management already estimated to be more than $500 billion.
This puts an incredible strain on wallets, providers, drug companies and many other facets of the care continuum to address what feels like an almost insurmountable challenge in today’s volatile healthcare landscape.
Medical cannabinoids have emerged as an underutilized way to close the gap
Patients are taking matters into their own hands – alongside providers from leading cancer centers that have the resources to extend their alternative care purview. They are partially filling the whitespace with medical cannabinoids or cannabis.
Interestingly, 21% of Americans over the age of 50 and up to 40% of those in cancer treatment report using cannabis for symptom management. That’s millions and millions of people using a care alternative that clinical experts agree has huge potential but needs more research and stricter product standards.
Providers are asking for more help in instilling confidence in this alternative care option. The challenge is that cannabinoids are too often used without the appropriate clinical guidance and usage guardrails. This both delays broader acceptance and misses the fact that efficacy varies from individual to individual, due to the unpredictability of how each person may experience different cannabinoids at different doses. The answer to this problem lies in digital care platforms.
Digital care platforms will play a pioneering role in cannabinoid care
Unlike pen and paper prescriptions, poorly personalized labels, and instructions to consult medical professionals, AI-native digital care and clinician augmentation platforms scale access to research, information, and clinical guidance like never before. Medical cannabinoids need this. A lack of guidance and provider oversight risks suboptimal outcomes.
Analysts predict a trillion-dollar shift in healthcare towards a digital-first, proactive and personalized system of care. It makes digital platforms a meaningful and effective solution to the medical cannabis education and guidance gap. These platforms give users confidence in knowing that product or dosage decisions are made by more than a hunch.
Think about typical symptom management, or over the counter (OTC) medications that are used to subside them. Sure, the combination of familiarity and low-risk products means that users can have some confidence. But anyone with prolonged symptom management issues or who is dealing with other care challenges will more often than not seek the advice of a trained clinical professional. Why? Because relevant aspects of each patient – including specific symptoms, medical records, current medications, and daily scheduling can all impact the efficacy of any care option.
For the first time, patients experiencing symptoms have access to this clinical guidance. It is building this foundation with providers at nationally recognized healthcare centers in clinician augmentation and full-outsource models. And, with that, digital care platforms are trained, informed, and reviewed alongside clinical intelligence, resulting in reliable recommendations and guidance applicable to anyone with a phone or laptop. It scales access to clinically guided cannabinoid care like never before.
Platforms bridge clinical science and patient experience to better guide and manage care
Digital platforms are a cost-effective means to bridge research and clinical guidance with personalized product information at scale. In the case of medical cannabinoids, the industry is largely in its infancy in the United States, due to insufficient funding for research (an equation that should shift with rescheduling) and a lack of measurable data to understand its broader efficacy and risks. That said, there is no denying people are using cannabis for symptom management and there exists a growing bench of use cases. This has been well known for a while now. Qualitative affirmation outweighs quantitative.
Digital care platforms are changing this equation. Digital care platforms give users – and clinicians – access to intelligent recommendations based on unique patient history. And, just as importantly, it gives users a direct means to provide real-time, data-driven feedback. When user outcomes are measured in real time through an app – as opposed to days between clinical visits or not even at all in the case of a self-prescribed application – the industry can start to gather efficacy data at scale.
This is the first place to start as we are learning more about cannabis, how best to administer it, how it reacts with individuals, and other medications, each and every day. There is valuable data available on how medical cannabis and cannabinoids impact individuals, positively and any adverse events.
The cannabis care platforms of the future
Bringing together medical-grade cannabinoids for symptom management with the right research, clinical guidance, and AI-native care platforms will speed up and scale access to appropriate medical cannabis care for symptom management. In healthcare, any LLM-only solution will fall short based on the lack of specificity on outcomes and the lack of clear explainability and clinical interrogation. In the symptom management space, trained probabilistic models paired with LLM agents integrate prior knowledge, are explicable, and provide audience-specific personalization because they adapt to new information.
Any care option or care alternative that is trusted by clinicians, providers, health plans, and the people using it needs the following: data, research, rules/guidelines, and clinical knowledge. Together, this is a powerful recipe for success – and one that can positively impact the current cost of care challenge. Without it, the care model will not succeed.
For the first time ever, clinical care platforms bring a proven solution to medical cannabinoids for symptom management.
With greater research, richer user data, and increasingly precise and predictive care, medical cannabinoids for symptom management can reach their potential and provide relief for those most in need.
About Sean Collins
Sean Collins is the CEO and Co-Founder at EO Care, a company unlocking the profound health benefits of cannabinoid-based care at digital scale. A longtime startup founder and investor in data-driven guidance platforms, Sean has focused for years on helping people and businesses make decisions in the context of uncertainty. He has deep expertise in digital/app-based startups, Bayesian and ML team formation, product commercialization and distribution.
