$8M for AI-assisted therapy startup Read in browser

Tuesday, 19 November 2024

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All year long, pharma companies like Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Biogen have painted their new telehealth partnerships as strategies for expanding access to doctors and making a complicated system simpler. But, as I report in my latest piece today, it’s not hard to see how greater access can lead to bigger sales of their drugs. "What other industry spends millions and millions of dollars promoting directly to consumers and when they get a consumer interested, they tell them good luck, I hope you can get it? Telemedicine’s a way to complete that loop," Howard Seidman, chief operating officer at Populus, a company powering telehealth for drugmakers, told me.  Pharma companies are leaning into direct-to-consumer online care at a time when it’s being embraced by patients like never before. Companies like Hims are experiencing huge growth. Tons of patients are paying cash for obesity drugs online. Even Amazon is jumping on the trend. It’s quickly becoming not just a side project, but a key sales strategy for some drugmakers. Are their relationships with online providers leading to good care? Or simply easy access to potentially inappropriate prescriptions? Read on and let me know what you think.  - Shelby

Here’s what’s new Lawmakers are poking holes in pharma's favorite new way to market medicines A new way of sell­ing med­ica­tions has land­ed phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies in law­mak­ers’ crosshairs. Exclusive: Synapticure raises $25M for its approach to virtual neurodegenerative disease care Synap­ti­c­ure, a start­up build­ing dig­i­tal health tools for peo­ple with neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive con­di­tions and their care­givers, has raised a new round of fund­ing to bring its ap­proach to more peo­ple liv­ing with con­di­tions like ALS, Parkin­son’s dis­ease and Alzheimer’s dis­ease. Exclusive: Jimini Health launches with $8M for AI-assisted therapy Ther­a­pists can’t be around for their pa­tients 24/7. One start­up is bet­ting AI can be the so­lu­tion.

Quote of the week "It shouldn’t be the case that you’re more likely to be prescribed the product because you’ve gone through the link rather than seeing your own provider." Kyle Faget, co-chair of the national healthcare practice group at Foley & Lardner on the potential conflicts of pharma's telehealth ambitions

This week in health Тech CVS appointed four new board members as part of discussions with activist investor Glenview Capital Management. The new board members are Glenview CEO Larry Robbins, former CMS official Leslie Norwalk, H2 Health CEO Guy Sansone and former IRS commissioner Doug Shulman. CareMax, a Miami-based chain of primary care clinics for seniors, said it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. As part of the proceedings, the company has reached agreements to sell its clinics and part of its management services organization. The DEA and HHS have once again temporarily extended pandemic-era flexibilities allowing doctors to prescribe controlled substances online without first seeing a patient in person. Those flexibilities, which were set to expire at the end of this year, will continue through December 2025. Citizen Health, a consumer health data startup, raised $14.5 million in a seed round led by Transformation Capital. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because in 2021, genetic testing company Invitae acquired the startup (then called Ciitizen). Invitae later divested it in 2023.

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