Microdoing is GLP-1 compounding's next act

Telehealth companies Noom, Found, and Hims & Hers have all recently launched programs to prescribe "microdosed" GLP-1s. The companies say that in small doses the drugs can provide myriad health benefits, but as Katie Palmer reports, there's no robust evidence of these marketing claims. The strategy is the latest effort by telehealth companies and their compounding pharmacy partners to extend the runway to profit off of the popular diabetes and obesity drugs.

artificial intelligence

Insurers vow to battle 'aggressive' AI hospital coding

In quarterly earnings calls and other recent comments insurers said they will step up efforts to combat hospitals' growing use of artificial intelligence to maximize reimbursement.

As Katie reports, Centene CFO Andrew Asher told a banking conference audience that "hospitals have gotten better organized around the application of AI for coding than payers," and UnitedHealthcare CEO Tim Noel last week said the insurer will make "more use of AI in our payment integrity programs," to battle "continued expansion of aggressive provider coding and billing practices." The comments suggest a new wave of rapidly adopted provider AI tools are having a real impact on payments.

business

AI-fueled revenue helps primary care chain expand

Here's another perspective on the same issue: Brittany Trang reports that North and South Carolina-based primary and urgent care chain Med First used medical coding AI to increase its revenues by 6% helping to fuel the organization's expansion to new locations.

"We're a for-profit entity that believes that the more margin that we're able to make, the more patients we're able to serve," Med First's CFO Wes Edwards told Brittany.

The story unpacks the uneasy dance between increased billing and raising health care costs, and Edwards' surprising attitude toward insurance companies that are fighting back.

Health tech news roundup

Hippocratic AI, which develops AI agents that handle calls for health systems, raised $126 million in new funding. The Series C funding round was led by Avenir Growth with participation from several well known investment firms including CapitalG, General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, and Kleiner Perkins. Health systems including WellSpan also invested — I wrote about their investing strategy recently in STAT Health Tech. Hippocratic is now valued at $3.5 billion.
On Talkspace's third quarter earnings call, CEO Jon Cohen said that the virtual mental health company's homegrown large language model outperforms commercial LLM products in early testing. Cohen said the model "can be used as an engagement tool for intake screening for multiple different types of patients and as an engagement tool in between sessions." Talkspace plans to launch a full product offering in the first half of 2026 and sees opportunities including "an affordable alternative for consumers and an attractive alternative for employers to provide a low cost alternative to their employees." In related news, Lyra Health, another large mental health tech company, recently announced its own chatbot push.
At its user conference this week, electronic health record company athenahealth announced a new AI EHR, AI scribe (athenaAmbient), and clinical copilot (Sage). Both the new EHR and scribe are available at no additional cost to customers and will go into testing in the first half of 2026. An athenahealth spokesperson told STAT the scribe is an additional option on top the scribes currently available through the company's EHR, including Suki, iScribe, and Abridge.
Summa Health CEO Cliff Deveny will step down at end of 2025, Healthcare Dive reported. The departure announcement follows the successful acquisition of the health system by General Catalyst-backed HATCo.
Hims and Hers reported earnings showing the company continued to grow and narrowing its yearly revenue guidance to $2.34 billion to $2.36 billion. The telehealth company said it was in talks with Novo Nordisk to make Wegovy injections available to users as well as the company's forthcoming oral formulation of the drug, once approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

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