'Irresponsible' Hims Super Bowl advertising

Hims' Super Bowl ad is optimized to infuriate: It calls out a weight loss industry that's designed to keep overweight Americans "sick and stuck" and drugmakers for making medications that work but are "priced for profits, not patients." It's an obvious knock at expensive GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound.

Hims, of course, sees itself as the solution to the problem, and flogs its compounded copies of the drugs that are "affordable, doctor-trusted, and formulated in the USA." These versions are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and Hims and the compounding industry are currently fighting with drugmakers over their ability to continue selling the copies. Moreover, because its not technically a pharmaceutical ad, Hims does not need to disclose all of the many side-effects and contraindications of the medications. Observers told STAT's Katie Palmer they were "shocked" by the ad and that it was "irresponsible."

And as Katie notes, the whole thing is disingenuous. Hims is a for-profit concern that prescribes the name-brand weight loss drugs and owns manufacturing plants. It projected it will end 2024 with over $1.4 billion in revenue, and its stock price has soared thanks to its work on GLP-1s. Hims is very much a part of the weight-loss industry it's got a problem with.

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Policy

Trump admin cancels health tech advisory meetings

The Trump administration has indefinitely canceled meetings of a health technology advisory committee responsible for helping to formulate rules around the use of data and artificial intelligence tools in health care, STAT's Casey Ross reported.

The brief memo, circulated early Wednesday, informs members of the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) that all meetings of the committee and its working groups are canceled until further notice. The committee operates under the federal health department's Office of the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy and the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ASTP-ONC).

Owkin launches study of "AI-optimized" drug

AI in drug development is a vague term that might mean many things, and today, Owkin is announcing it has enrolled the first patient in a phase 1 study of OKN4395, its "AI-optimized" candidate for solid tumors, including sarcoma, non-small cell lung cancer, mesothelioma, and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

As STAT's Brittany Trang reports, the French company's technology can synthesize information from literature and proprietary data sets to suggest tumors that might be a good fit for the drug. Besides obvious targets, it also proposes narrower opportunities without existing drugs the present a potentially quicker regulatory pathway.

Still for all the glitzy potential on the discovery side, development senior vice president Andrew Pierce told Brittany that some of the biggest potential in AI might be in "boring stuff," like help with documentation, completing regulatory paperwork, and spotting potential data quality issues.

Read the whole interview here

business

Software businesses are the big winners of the health tech boom

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In a new report, Define Ventures takes a look at venture-backed companies that managed to go public or otherwise exit in what it considers the first generation of health tech startups that came up over the last 10 years. There are a lot of insightful analyses of stock performance and other metrics, and it's always interesting to me to see how these reports choose to lump together companies in the market, often in ways that suit the investment theses and portfolios of the authors.

In particular, Define separates models that are services only (Talkspace or Amwell) from those that are "hybrid," meaning have services plus some software element (Hims, Accolade). Compare that, for example, to a recent Bessemer Venture Partners report that just lumps these all together as "tech-enabled clinical services."

Besides allowing Define to separate companies where it bet right — i.e. Hims — from those that are doing less well, the buckets help illustrate how services companies whose fortunes are tied to volume of visits alone have not fared as well as others. The big winners in health tech are and will continue to be software companies most patients have never heard of. Define flags Doximity and I think its fair to think of all the newer companies using AI to tackle administrative burden and revenue cycle management in this category.

Worth noting here that some of Define's analyses are based on limited cohort of companies that are still on stock markets, many of which went public in the pandemic pressure cooker. Looking ahead, Define says its eyeing 20 companies it thinks have exit potential. Besides some much discussed choices like Omada and Hinge, they flag Included, Cohere, Devoted, and Lyra.

health tech

Funding, lobbying, and other industry news

The Coalition for Health AI has registered to lobby. A new disclosure lists Susan Zook of Mason Street Consulting as their representative. CHAI members include Microsoft, Google, Amazon, CVS, Mayo Clinic, Duke, and many other organizations. A PR person told me: "With the the rapid rise of AI and Health AI, we are committed to fostering a dialogue with legislators, gaining valuable insights and positioning CHAI as a trusted educational resource in the AI space."
Delfina Care, a health tech company working to improve maternal health care, announced it raised a $17 million Series A round led by USVP.
NeuroFlow, which makes behavioral health screening and triage tools for health care organizations, acquired Quartet Health, a company that helps match patients to behavioral health providers. NeuroFlow is fresh of a deal to use risk models developed by Intermountain Health.
Rad AI, which as its name implies makes radiology AI solutions, announced it raised a $60 million Series C round led by Transformation Capital, with participation from Khosla Ventures and others.
Quibim, developer of AI models for analyzing MRI, PET, and CT Scans, announced $50 million in Series A funding from Asabys and Buenavista.
Suki, an AI platform for clinical documentation and other uses, announced that video conferencing company Zoom was making an investment of an undisclosed amount. The companies previously announced that Suki would power a documentation features in Zoom's offering for health care providers.
Bicycle Health, a virtual opioid addiction clinic, announced it raised $16.5 million led by Questa Capital. The round did not have a series label and it's considerably less than the $50 million it raised in 2022. The company said it reached operating profitability last year.
Hone Health, a direct to consumer telehealth company known for offering testosterone replacement therapy, announced $33 million in Series A funding to "drive the company's expansion into proactive & preventative longevity care for men and women."

Startups

Mukherjee on his new AI cancer startup

Brittany Trang writes: In Tuesday's newsletter we mentioned the almost $25 million Series A round for Manas AI, the AI biotech company started by LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and physician author Siddhartha Mukherjee. We caught up with Mukherjee, who is on leave from his hematologist/oncologist post at Columbia and just turned in three chapters for an updated version of his 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning book on cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies.

What sets Manas apart from all of the other drug development AI companies out there? Mukherjee issued a bit of shade at other companies in the field: "What you won't see from Manas is sort of pie-in-the-sky attempts to make medicines," he said, citing his and other people on the Manas board's experience at bringing drugs to market." So that's one big difference. These people have done it before. They'll do it again. There's a there's a track record of doing that."

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