Mario Aguilar , 2025-04-29 15:53:00
You’re reading the web edition of STAT’s Health Tech newsletter, our guide to how technology is transforming the life sciences. Sign up to get it delivered in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.
As of last week, Chris Klomp is in charge of the Center for Medicare. Unlike predecessors, he’s not a policy wonk. Klomp was formerly the CEO of health IT company Collective Medical, which he sold, in 2020, for hundreds of millions of dollars. He also served on the boards of health tech companies like Maven Clinic and Nomi Health.
As Klomp prepared to take the role, I spoke with dozens of friends, former colleagues, and policy experts to get a handle on how exactly he might approach the responsibilities. Again and again, people told me he hopes to “modernize” how Medicare uses technology and data to improve how the program works, and in particular, to hunt for cost savings. My profile offers an early look at some of Klomp’s tech-related aspirations. I also explore how he might respond to important questions around the future of Medicare Advantage, and how he’s rallied behind some of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s priorities.
End of compounded GLP-1s puts patients in a bind
While branded GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy and Mounjaro were in shortage, patients with obesity or diabetes could obtain compounded copies at a fraction of the cost. With the shortages officially over, some of these patients are out of luck.
In a new story, STAT’s Katie Palmer and Elaine Chen report on the difficult situation for many patients who cannot afford the medications, even after drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk started offering them at lower prices. Read more here
Medical device makers weigh in on tarrifs
Following the Trump administration’s announcement of huge tariffs, some of the largest medical device manufacturers have started to tell shareholders how the taxes on imports might influence their businesses. STAT’s Bob Herman reports on what companies like Boston Scientific, Resmed, Penumbra, and more have said so far. How will they avoid or offset the impacts? Read more here
What happens to the old chatbots in an LLM world?
Woebot will shut down its chatbot mental health app at the end of June, Behavioral Health Business reported last week. Woebot originally launched its bot on Facebook Messenger in 2017, long before large language models made the development of AI bots trivial. While the company uses a friendly chat interface, the programming under the hood is pre-scripted and designed to provide reliable mental health treatment for anxiety and other mild mental health issues in a predictable way.
Since the LLM boom, the company has taken the defensible position that generative AI is risky to use for mental health. That’s true! But that principled position also happened to support the company’s long-standing approach to technology. Woebot raised $90 million in 2021 and has spent a lot of money developing the tech and testing it in clinical trials. As I wrote in STAT Health Tech in August 2023, the company was experimenting with LLMs in limited ways but remained committed to its core approach.
From afar, it’s difficult to assess the strength of Woebot’s business. The company announced some deals around making versions of its bot available to health organizations and employers. In 2023, it abandoned development of a prescription version of its technology to treat postpartum depression, as the business of prescription digital therapeutics proved difficult.
Woebot has chugged along, but people’s expectations have changed — and importantly, probably, so have the expectations of investors. Risky or not, researchers and companies are plowing ahead with LLM-based mental health technology. Plus, a bot is just one dimension of other offerings now. For example, virtual mental health company Headspace recently launched its own AI bot that fits into its suite of self-guided mental health tools.
At this point we don’t know what lies ahead for Woebot the company. Maybe they’ll soon launch an LLM product supported by a huge fundraise. But there may be clues in the path of Wysa, a company that developed a similar mental health app to Woebot. Last year, Wysa announced Copilot, a suite of automated tools meant to work alongside a human therapist. Earlier this year, Wysa merged with virtual mental health company April Health.
What we’re reading
- With the FDA in turmoil, the ‘revolving door’ with industry is spinning faster, STAT
- How the state sent Californians’ personal health data to LinkedIn, CalMatters
- DeepSeek’s “Low-Cost” Adoption Across China’s Hospital Systems, JAMA
