Teladoc makes its case for sustained growth

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Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic used the JPM 2024 stage to explain why the company believes it's got plenty of "running room" to grow its integrated care business that connects people to a host of virtual health care services. During the pandemic, Teladoc spent years building awareness and signing up health plans and employers as customers. The company now hopes to generate more revenue from its existing clients, both by engaging with more of the 90 million people eligible for its services, and by selling more services to its customers.

In addition to virtual urgent care services, the company also offers programs for chronic conditions like diabetes, mental health services, a primary care offering, and a host of specialty care services like dermatology. Gorevic shared data showing an increase in the percentage of people enrolled in its general medical offering with access to another Teladoc service. Interesting side note: The company disclosed that 42% of its integrated care revenue comes from chronic care management.

The messaging was meant to reassure investors who have seen the company's growth slow down considerably from the boom days of the early pandemic. The company has promised investors efficiency and "balanced growth" — that its revenue will continue to grow and that its bottom line will grow even faster. "We're not spending to grow at all costs," Gorevic told the JPM audience. "We're spending to grow profitably."

That's the kind of message investors are hoping to hear — we'll see what it does for Teladoc's stock price.

Earnings

Accolade jumps on positive business outlook

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Tech-powered health benefits company Accolade's stock is up over 30% this week following a rosy earnings report in which the company beat analyst estimates and affirmed that it expected to be profitable and grow its business by 20% in 2025.

Additionally, the company increased its long-term outlook, saying that in 2029 it would have $1 billion in revenue and that its adjusted earnings would be between 15-20% of revenue.

Accolade contracts with companies and other organizations to help their employees navigate and access a range of care and services, hopefully saving some money and providing superior care along the way. In recent years the company has taken steps to make its offering more robust, like acquiring a medical second opinion service and a virtual care provider and creating a partner ecosystem of point solutions it can offer its customers.

Accolade sees an opportunity to funnel customers from its core navigation and advocacy product to other services. But to reach its goals, the company will also need to add more customers and increase efficiency, and CEO Rajeev Singh took several minutes of his prepared remarks to highlight how the company was using artificial intelligence to help the business run more smoothly.

Industry news

JPM bits: Headspace, Hims & Hers, Nvidia

Since Headspace, the mental health app, and Ginger, a provider of virtual mental health care and coaching, merged in 2021, there have been repeated allusions to how the separate and theoretically complementary offerings would eventually converge. Beginning this month, the company's full suite of services will be available from a single Headspace-branded app to enterprise customers. The move to unify comes as there's evidence that employers want comprehensive mental health solutions from as few vendors as possible.
Hims and Hers Health, one of the top providers of specialty telehealth care that links people to prescriptions for common needs like hair loss treatment has a new strategic agreement with Connecticut's Hartford HealthCare. Under the relationship, Hims can refer its patients to the health system for any of a number of reasons including that they "require additional in-person follow-up care or evaluations or are in need of care for conditions not currently supported by the Hims & Hers platform."
My colleague Matthew Herper reports that Nvidia's presentation at JPM 2024 was packed. The company's market cap sits at over $1 trillion right now because its chips are powering many recent artificial intelligence breakthroughs. The company has made aggressive investments in biotech companies and has stoked hype around the coming age of "digital biology," in which algorithms help usher new medicines to patients. As Matt notes, there's a lot of promise for such technology but it could still take longer than we think.

Research

Using AI to extract social determinants of health data

Factors like housing, transportation, financial stability, and community support play a critical role in patients' health. When care providers act on these social needs, it can help improve outcomes. But even when it's written down, such information often gets buried in the impenetrable jargon of medical records.

In a new study, researchers used large language models to identify references to these social needs data in the records of 770 cancer patients from the Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center. As my colleague Katie Palmer reports, the best performing model was able to identify 45 out of 48 patients who had an adverse social determinant hidden in their notes.

What we're reading

Eisai harnesses wearables data for AI-led Alzheimer's prediction, MobiHealthNews
National trends in billing secure messages as e-visits, JAMA
Perspective: Accuracy and equity in clinical risk prediction using algorithms, NEJM
Advances in mind-decoding technologies raise hopes (and worries), Undark