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The state of consumer health |
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| On Thursday, the Health Tech team led a series of conversations at the Financial Times’ US Pharma and Biotech Summit, held in collaboration with Endpoints News. The sessions focused on the changing ways consumers are interacting with healthcare. That included pharma’s changing relationship with patients, how wearable data (and consumer-derived data, generally) are starting to factor into health outcomes, and the rising interest in longevity care. |
| Here were some of the most notable moments from the conversations: |
- Consumers are going “off-piste” when it comes to taking and micro-dosing GLP-1 medications, Evidation Health co-founder Christine Lemke said. Citing survey data compiled by Evidation, Lemke said about 15% of people who are injecting micro-dosed GLP-1s for weight loss are doing so without a physician involved.
- Using AI on our health data: A significant number of people in the audience raised their hands when we asked how many had uploaded their health information into a generative AI tool.
- There’s a good chance that doctors won’t be involved in our health in the way they are today: “Medicine is probably the only business on the planet where your outcome is completely dependent on the quality of your inputs,” Calum MacRae, a cardiologist and researcher with Harvard Medical School, said. That can mean that if someone in the healthcare system doesn’t recognize a pattern, you might not get the treatment you need. Wearables, he said, are beginning to empower individuals differently. That might lead to moments where physicians can be cut out of the loop when they don’t add value, or left in when they do, he
said.
- New term of the week: “Barbie peptide.” When asked what longevity treatments are snake oil, Midi Health chief medical officer Kathleen Jordan brought up the term, referring to a peptide geared to help you tan and increase sexual desire. She said she’s seeing people come in asking for it. “We can't dismiss people asking about them,” Jordan said. “I think we actually have to know the evidence and also know what their health goals are and help them compare it to other evidence-based ways to get there.”
- “It's an amazing time to be a mouse,” Life Biosciences CEO Jerry McLaughlin joked, referring to longevity treatments doubling the lives of mice in research settings. Translating those data into other animals, and ideally humans, will be the test. He said he’s been blown away by the claims made about supplements despite no evidence.
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| We had a lot of fun bringing these conversations to a crowd of pharma and biotech leaders. There was a lot more skepticism around concepts like peptides than we’ve heard at other events around the country. Thank you for tuning in! |
| - Lydia |
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