I’ve been noticing a trend of on-demand healthcare. This ranges from infusion centers where you can drop in for a vitamin or fluid IV, to telehealth services advertising access to WegovyⓇ prescriptions or the Freestyle Libre Continuous Glucose Monitor. I’m assuming these services provide some sort of a cursory medical review before giving folks what they want, but the key is that these are consumer-led.
This fall Akili, the company behind EndeavorRx, announced that they would pivot from a prescription model to an over-the-counter model for sale of their ADHD video game app. Payer reimbursement has been a key issue for digital medicine companies, as we saw from the Pear Therapeutics post-mortem. I’m watching for this trend of on-demand healthcare trend to pair with the over-the-counter model as a way of establishing digital medicine on the market, while payers and large companies vacillate on the overall value model.
Image credit: Nutrisense, Inc.