| | | |   | Good morning. Mario here with a bounty of great stories from my colleagues, including a dive on the boom in services providing ketamine prescriptions online. | | | The risks of telehealth for ketamine At least a dozen companies are now offering ketamine prescriptions online, taking advantage of loosened regulations during the pandemic. While the flexibility has increased access to people who want the drug for treatment-resistant depression and other mental health conditions, it also creates opportunity for abuse. Many companies market their services online as treatments for stress and anxiety, raising concerns that they are “trivializing the use of ketamine.” And critics warn that telehealth screening and monitoring of patients hasn’t been studied or standardized and may not be adequate. Read Katie Palmer’s story here. | Apple study reports on the impacts of Covid-19 vaccines Newly published data from the Apple Women’s Health Study reinforces previous research showing that Covid-19 vaccination was linked to a temporary increase in the length of menstrual cycles. Researchers analyzed 128,094 cycles from 8,486 vaccinated and 1,166 unvaccinated participants and noted a very small increase in the length of cycles during which they received vaccination: half a day for a first dose of an mRNA vaccine, just under half a day for the second dose, and just over 1 day for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The researchers are careful to note there is no evidence that vaccination impacts fertility.
It’s not the most mind-blowing finding, but it does hint at the potential of tapping the huge number of people who use Apple’s products for studies to answer all kinds of questions. Launched in 2019 with Harvard, the Apple Women’s Health study is one of several longitudinal studies that the company supports through its official Research application. | Online requests for abortion medication spike  Requests for abortion pills through telemedicine shot up dramatically the months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to a new analysis published in JAMA. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Aid Access, a nonprofit online telemedicine service that provides medication that people can use to safely end a pregnancy at home, examined the organization’s data from September 2021 through August 2022 and saw two distinct spikes: the first, after the Supreme Court’s draft decision leaked to the public, and an even starker increase after the decision came down.
As the graphic from the study above shows, largest increases in medication abortion requests came from states with the most severe restrictions, including Louisiana and Arkansas. Read Jayne Williamson-Lee’s story on the findings here. | Partnering to advance health equity and diversify the bioinformatics workforce Data show only 7.1% of the employed biomedical and life sciences workforce is Black, Hispanic or Native American. The United Health Foundation is partnering with Harris-Stowe State University, a historically Black college and university in St. Louis, to help change that. Their partnership has created a new bioinformatics training program to increase awareness of the field among high school and college students and further diversify the life sciences workforce. Learn more about our commitment to advancing health equity and diversifying the health tech workforce. | What’s success for startups targeting underserved populations? For noble-minded startups hoping to reach underserved populations, there’s no standard measure of impact, Mohana Ravindranath reports. Some companies measure easily quantifiable numbers like appointments booked, and investors can of course look to metrics like financial performance, but there’s a growing appetite — and need — for robust metrics that give insight into clinical outcomes in these populations. There’s debate about what exactly companies should measure to show that they are reaching patients who might not have strong established relationships with traditional health care. Read the whole story here. | | | Personnel file -
Edward Cox joined Pfizer as head and general manager of digital health and medicines. Most recently, Cox was a senior vice president at consultancy Eversana. Before that he was CEO at pioneering and now-defunct digital therapeutics company Dthera. -
Headway appointed Olivia Davis as chief commercial officer and Servaes Tholen as Chief Financial Officer. Davis was previously chief growth officer and general manager at Get Well and Tholen was previously CFO at Grove Collaborative, Thumbtack, and Upwork. -
Tabula Rasa HealthCare, which develops technology promoting safe use of medications, named April Gill chief commercial officer. Previously she was an executive vice president and general manager at Virgin Pulse. - Cancer care navigation company Thyme Care added Brad Diephuis as chief business officer. Previously he was a senior advisor at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.
| What to read around the web today -
Leaked audio reveals Cerebral execs telling workers they blew through too much money too quickly, Business Insider -
'Think beyond the label': How AI developers can build patient trust and improve transparency, Fierce Healthcare -
FDA panel asks for improvements in pulse oximeters, STAT - Spotlight: Digital health regulatory science research pportunities, Food and Drug Administration
- Computerized games versus crosswords training in mild cognitive impairment, NEJM Evidence
| | | Thanks for reading! More next week,  | |
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