| |   | Good morning, health tech readers! The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference kicked off yesterday — closely watched by our colleagues covering the business of providers, insurers, and biopharma — and we’ll keep you posted on any health tech news as the week goes on. If you’ve got news tips, let us know at mohana.ravindranath@statnews.com. | | | Dispatches from JPM Health tech bigwigs braved treacherous Bay Area weather this week to dig into the industry’s biggest questions at JPM and its many satellite events — including how to raise money or turn profits in an era of shrinking venture funding and tightened budgets. At one lunch event, Cityblock’s Toyin Ajayi, Town Hall Ventures’ Andy Slavitt, and Included Health’s Ami Parekh dissected health care’s alarming inability to meet patients’ needs, as compared to consumer health tech giants Amazon who prioritize their customers’ needs above all else.
In other business news, primary care tech startup Carbon Health’s latest $100 million round from CVS Health Ventures made waves among attendees puzzled by its recent layoffs and pivot away from chronic care. More on that later. …And if you’re looking for top-line industry stats to flash at JPM cocktail parties, here’s one from digital health venture fund Rock Health’s year-end report: U.S. digital health startups raised $15.3 billion across 572 deals last year — a little more than half the money raised in 2021. | New options for telehealth abortion providers Earlier this month the Food and Drug Administration cemented a temporary rule allowing abortion providers to distribute the medication through the mail, which could make it easier for telehealth companies to reach patients living in states where the procedure isn't currently legal, my colleague Katie Palmer writes. Though those patients wouldn’t be able to receive the medication in states with bans, they could drive to nearby states for video visits and wait to fill the prescription at a retail pharmacy, for instance. Above all, the ruling will give patients more options, the companies tell Katie. “For some patients, a mail order pharmacy with delivery to their home is still the best option for a medication abortion,” womens’ health clinic chain Tia’s Stephanie Long told Katie. “For others, walking into a retail pharmacy without waiting for shipping may be the best option.” Read more here. | Tweet of the week | You’re invited to STAT’s JPM Recap On Jan. 13, get a full rundown of the deals, data, and scuttlebutt from the STAT reporters who attended the conference, and come away with insights you won’t get anywhere else. Sign up here. | A new wrinkle in the telehealth cost question As we enter the pandemic’s fourth year, we’re still wrestling with crucial unknowns about how telehealth changes how and when patients seek care. Among key questions insurers, regulators and analysts are desperate to answer: Does virtual care make people visit the doctor more than they would if in-person care were the only option, or is it a direct substitute for brick-and-mortar care? If they’re new visits, do they drive up costs? And if they do, is that necessarily a bad thing? “We likely will never get a clean answer on yes, no, whether the availability of telemedicine increases spending,” said Harvard’s Ateev Mehrotra, who told me the impact likely varies by condition and specialty. Studies are trickling in, though they may not be bringing experts close to that clean answer. New RAND research examined about 5 million commercially insured patients and found that the availability of virtual appointments in 2020 increased the number of mental health visits — in part because of an escalation in mental health needs during the pandemic. RAND’s Ryan McBain told STAT he’d generally expect the spike in visits “to be a good thing: more people are seeking care to address their needs.” Read my full story here. | GPT-3 experiment raises ethical questions The co-founder of peer mental health support nonprofit Koko — a Discord bot that lets visitors either ask for help or help others via chat — sparked intense debate about informed consent and research ethics on Twitter when he described using AI language model GPT-3 on the platform. People offering support could choose to craft a response with AI guidance, or compose their own message. Support-givers used the system on about 30,000 posts, touching about 4,000 people, Koko co-founder Rob Morris said on Twitter. Though the messages were all reviewed by humans before they were sent, Morris said the company did not initially inform help-seekers that the messages were co-crafted with AI. “We gave GPT to peer supporters to help them compose responses. Similar to how crisis responders might copy-paste from a script, but with GPT3. Knowing responses were ghost-written by AI creates a bad [user experience],” he tweeted. “Do you understand why this is bad? You perform experiments with some of the most vulnerable people and are casually explaining that you did this without their consent?,” wrote computer scientist and AI scholar Timnit Gebru, among dozens to object to the experiment. Though the messages guided by AI were rated higher by help-seekers than those written by humans, and though response time was quicker, Koko pulled the AI. “Once people learned the messages were co-created by a machine, it didn’t work," Morris wrote. | Coming soon: penalties for information blocking The HHS Office of the Inspector General is one step closer to outlining the disincentives for blocking health data sharing — a key piece of federal government’s massive, years-long IT overhaul designed to ease the flow of patient data. While the 2016 21st Century Cures Act banned information blocking, and subsequent federal rules outlined specific instances that would constitute information blocking, the government hasn’t yet clarified what consequences providers violating that ban would face. The agency appears to be aiming to drop a proposal in September, though it remains to be seen if they’ll hit the deadline. | What’s going on with Carbon Health? It’s been a rollercoaster recently for the closely watched primary care tech startup: Last week, Carbon chief strategy officer Myoung Cha touted a buzzy new partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield Massachusetts to offer wearables-enhanced primary care, and days later CEO Eren Bali announced yet another round of layoffs (200 employees) following a similar-size cut over the summer. They’re also sunsetting programs like public health, remote patient monitoring, hardware and chronic care “to focus on our core primary care and urgent care service,” Bali tweeted last week. And coinciding with JPM’s Monday kickoff, the company announced a late stage $100 million infusion from CVS Health Ventures to fuel its expansion into primary and urgent care. If you’ve got thoughts on what this pivot means for primary care competitors, drop us a line. | Other industry news: -
Steve Schwartz, executive vice president of corporate development at Transcarent, is retiring, according to LinkedIn. -
Part of Teladoc's ongoing and at times beleaguered efforts to unite disparate health services — including incorporating chronic care company Livongo into its existing primary and urgent care products — the telehealth giant is now offering a single log-in for all its services including primary care, mental health and chronic care. | | | | | Thanks for reading! More on Thursday,  | |
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