AI diabetes prevention app study shows promise

An automated app designed to deliver a diabetes prevention intervention achieved similar results to a standard human-led version of the program in a study. Diabetes prevention programs encourage lifestyle changes in people with prediabetes, and have been shown to reduce health risks of participants. However, many people do not receive the intervention for a variety of reasons.

The trial randomized half of the 368 participants to receive an app from Sweetch Health that offers prompts about weight management, physical activity, and nutrition. The app's artificial intelligence personalizes messages to users based on information they log, for example about meals, and data collected from a wearable and digital scale. The app delivered both location- and goal-specific prompts, like encouraging a participant to pop into the gym when they are nearby. After 12 months, 31.7% of participants in this group hit the primary outcome of 5% weight loss, 4% weight loss plus 150 minutes of weekly physical activity, or a reduction in HbA1c of 0.2 percentage points. That's nearly identical to the 31.9% who hit the primary outcome in a group that received a virtual version of the intervention that includes regular sessions with human coaches.

The findings suggest AI can help expand access to diabetes prevention programs and may provide ammunition to vendors who seek reimbursement for offerings that make use of AI in place of human coaches. More broadly, the study adds to a growing body of evidence that apps are capable of delivering behavioral interventions.

Telehealth

Ro's attempts to measure 'food noise'

Telehealth company Ro launched a new questionnaire designed to measure "food noise," a term that people with obesity use to describe incessant thoughts about food. The tool is being used to measure the progress of people Ro is treating, and the company is also licensing the questionnaire to drugmakers who hope to track how their treatments impact food noise.

As Elaine Chen reports, proponents argue that it's high time that someone apply scientific rigor to the obesity-related symptom. Others, however, questioned the validity of the scale and whether food noise is well enough understood to measure as an outcome. And if it is, should a company marketing treatments be in charge of characterizing it?

Personnel file

Teladoc CFO out, Omada CMO in

Ahead of earnings readouts this week, some key, publicly-traded digital health companies announced significant leadership changes.

Teladoc CFO Mala Murthy will leave the company in November. Murthy joined in 2018 and oversaw Teladoc's finances through the company's pandemic-fueled growth. She held on for over a year after the arrival of CEO Chuck Divita last summer.
Newly public company Omada Health announced that Thomas Tsang will be its new chief medical officer. Tsang was previously the founding CEO of behavioral health company Valera Health, and currently serves on the boards of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City and the National Committee for Quality Assurance.

More around STAT

Check out more exclusive coverage with a STAT+ subscription

Read premium in-depth biotech, pharma, policy, and life science coverage and analysis with all of our STAT+ articles.

What we're reading

European oncology experts roll out guidance for use of large language models in clinical care, STAT
Medicare's WISeR model and the Challenge of low-value care, Health Affairs
Millions are confessing their secrets to chatbots. Is that therapy?, Wired
Amazon to lay off up to 30,000 corporate workers, Wall Street Journal