HLTH 2023, Day 3: CVS exec advocates for healthcare 'super app'

The HLTH 2023 conference kicked off Sunday in sunny Las Vegas, where innovative companies from across healthcare will come together to share strategies, network and plot the industry’s future. Speakers and presenters this year include General Catalyst, CVS Health, Kroger Health, Amazon, Geisinger and many more.

Follow here for updates throughout the day on the latest happenings from the conference. Catch up here:

- HLTH 2023, Day 2: Why more hospitals are dropping Medicare Advantage
- HLTH 2023, Day 1: WeightWatchers CEO defends telehealth direction
- Preview: What’s on tap at HLTH 2023?

8 p.m. CT: CVS executive advocates for healthcare 'super app'

While the U.S. does not have a single mobile platform through which all commerce flows, CVS Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sree Chaguturu said during a HLTH conference panel Tuesday that the nation could rely on a single app for specific verticals, such as healthcare.

“We won’t have a ‘super app’ the way that they have in other countries that crosses multiple sectors, but we do believe there is a role for super apps in particular verticals, and we think we’re well positioned to provide that,” Chaguturu said.

CVS Health sent more than 2 billion text messages to customers last year, he said. Customers were more likely to confirm their care and medication services through texting than through other communication channels, he added.
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“We will continue to evolve our digital assets in the vein of creating a ‘super app.’ We see a lot of engagement in text messages from seniors,” he said.

As CVS’ Aetna health insurance arm has grown its Medicare Advantage membership, the company intentionally invested in the Epic electronic health record platform to promote interoperability across the enterprise and keep track of enrollees’ chronic conditions, he said. CVS manages health information for 70 million lives through Epic, Chaguturu said.

—Nona Tepper

7:15 p.m. CT: Telehealth companies push on with GLP-1s despite shortages

Dr. Melynda Barnes, chief medical officer of direct-to-consumer telehealth company Ro, said she came to HLTH as an evangelist for glucagon-like peptide-1 agonist, or GLP-1, medications. She said the medications have worked wonders for patients looking to lose weight.

“I see this as a revolutionary treatment that could change the way generations of Americans live,” Barnes said. “I am here to try and [bring together] employers, payers, pharma, government, everyone here [at HLTH]. ... I'd like us to take our collective brain power, and instead of asking if it should be covered, we should be asking how we can cover it together.”

Ro started offering GLP-1 medications with its weight management program in January. Barnes said even with shortages of injectable GLP-1 medications Ozempic, Saxenda and Wegovy, and the telehealth company cutting back on its advertising spend, demand has not slowed down. With the shortages, Barnes said Ro clinicians are calling 10 pharmacies on average for each patient to fill their orders.

Noom, another telehealth weight loss company, announced on Monday at HLTH that it was adding its clinical obesity management solution, which includes GLP-1 medication prescriptions, to its enterprise customers. However, the company said it would support patients seeking to reduce reliance on the medications.

Digital health company Accolade released a survey on Monday that found GLP-1 coverage among employers could increase from 25% of employers that cover the medications in 2023 to 43% that plan to cover them next year.

—Gabriel Perna

6:30 p.m. CT: Headspace banks on health insurance

Health insurance companies are Headspace’s fastest-growing customer base, Katie DiPerna Cook, senior vice president of partnerships, said during an interview at the HLTH conference Tuesday.

Over the past two years, the digital behavioral health company said it has grown to cover 60 million enrollees and tripled its revenue generated from insurers over the past two years. Headspace in August announced it partnered with Intermountain Healthcare’s value-based care subsidiary Castell. The company wants to grow its value-based contracts with carriers, DiPerna Cook said.

“We’re not a point solution, we’re not a vendor; you should think of us as another provider in the network,” she said. “That’s how we want insurers to view us, and we have to get paid in a way that fits into a health plan’s payment structure.”

The majority of insurers contract with Headspace to offer behavioral health services to their commercial enrollees, DiPerna Cook said. Headspace has been growing the number of full-time behavioral health providers it employs in response to growing demand from insurers, she said. She declined to disclose how many providers were employed at the company.

“If we’re talking to a plan, and they want to expand access and bring more capacity to their region, we want to make sure we’re not potentially overlapping with some therapists who are contracted with them and contracted with us,” DiPerna Cook said. “As a value-based provider in mental health, we need to have clinical oversight and quality assurance.”

Headspace also aims to sign and leverage similar contracts with cities, such as Hartford, Connecticut, which last month announced it will pay an undisclosed sum to offer Headspace to all residents, students, and city and public school employees.

—Nona Tepper

4:25 p.m. CT: Cigna buys digital health provider Bright.md

Cigna Group will pay an undisclosed sum for digital health company Bright.md, the companies announced in a news release Tuesday. Cigna’s Evernorth Health Services unit will integrate Bright.md’s asynchronous digital services into MDLive, a telehealth platform that covers 60 million commercial, Medicaid and Medicare enrollees. MDLive supports about 2 million virtual urgent care, behavioral health, tele-dermatology and primary care visits annually, MDLive Chief Medical Officer Dr. Eric Weil said during an interview at the HLTH conference. 

Read the full story.

3 p.m. CT: Sutter Health to launch innovation center

Sacramento, California-based Sutter Health is opening an innovation center, CEO Warner Thomas announced at HLTH on Tuesday. The center will be based in San Francisco and is expected to open in early 2024, but the health system is still finalizing a specific location.

Through its work at the center, Sutter said it will partner with venture firms and early-stage digital health startups. The 23-hospital system will work with these companies on prototyping, testing and deploying products in a real-world healthcare environment.

Sutter will also use the center to advance its collaborations with some of its current digital health partners, including artificial intelligence company Ferrum Health. The system’s innovation team will work at the new center and help train clinicians in new innovations.

It’s all part of Sutter’s strategy to transform healthcare and make it more consumer friendly, Thomas said.

“It’s going to take partnerships and different approaches if we are really going to successfully solve the healthcare challenges of the country,” he said.

—Gabriel Perna
 

1:50 p.m CT: Amazon’s Neil Lindsay discusses past healthcare failures, future strategy

With a noticeably bigger presence at this year’s HLTH conference compared with last year’s show, Amazon has a clear mission in healthcare, said Vice President of Health Services Neil Lindsay. The longtime Amazon veteran was tapped in December 2021 to oversee all of its health efforts. Since then, the company has acquired primary care provider One Medical, launched Amazon Clinic and established a generic medication discount program through its Amazon Pharmacy business. 

Read the interview.

11:50 a.m. CT: Microsoft adds analytics, generative AI capabilities

Microsoft announced Tuesday that it’s adding a healthcare-specific solution to its analytics platform Microsoft Fabric. The analytics tool will enable health systems to combine data from electronic health records, imaging systems, claims systems and medical devices into one common architecture.

The tech giant rolled out Microsoft Fabric in May, and this will be its first healthcare-specific solution. Umesh Rustogi, general manager of Microsoft Healthcare Industry Cloud, said that healthcare organizations previously had to unify data from disparate sources from scratch, a process that is challenging, time consuming and potentially costly.

Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine is one of the early adopters of these tools. Northwestern's Chief Information Officer Doug King said the technology will allow the health system to track patients in real time and respond to specific medical needs.

On Tuesday, Microsoft also released capabilities within its Azure AI platform that will enable healthcare organizations to use generative AI. The clinical report simplification tool uses generative AI to give clinicians the ability to convert medical jargon into simple language. It also has a generative AI tool that extracts important events in a patient’s medical history from unstructured data and organizes them chronologically.

The company also launched a chatbot AI feature within Azure AI that answers patient questions using answers from a health system’s own content sources as well as credible organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.

—Gabriel Perna

11 a.m. CT: Microsoft, Abbott and other presentations on tap

Welcome to Day 3 of HLTH!

This is the final full day of HLTH and the last day we’ll be on site. It promises to be another exciting day. Microsoft’s vice president of Azure and Industry Marketing Alysa Taylor will be kicking off the day with a keynote address that will touch on its new investments into artificial intelligence and analytics. Other keynote speakers include former Cleveland Clinic CEO Dr. Toby Cosgrove, philanthropist Alice Walton and Abbott CEO Robert Ford.

Later this afternoon Chelsea Clinton, vice chair of the Clinton Foundation and co-founder of Metrodoro Ventures, will be speaking about how evolving healthcare models can ensure people to live longer. Ariana Huffington, founder and CEO of Thrive Global and former CEO of the Huffington Post, will also be speaking.

Many sessions on AI, innovative care models and the economics of digital health are also slated.

8 a.m. CT: Day 2 recap

The second day of HLTH started with executives from Google, McKesson, Headspace and Amazon/One Medical presenting on the main stage. Google leaders talked about the company’s developments in generative artificial intelligence and its Med-PaLM 2 large language model. Meanwhile, the CEO of Nemours Children's Health discussed his hospital's strategy of using AI as prior authorization demands climb.

Later in the day, comedian Howie Mandel took to the stage to talk about NOCD, a virtual obsessive compulsive disorder company where he serves as a partner. Read more highlights from Day 2 of HLTH here.