Last month, a few members of Lark’s team attended the 2024 HLTH Conference in Las Vegas, NV. At the conference, Lark’s CEO and Co-founder, Julia Hu, joined a panel discussion titled, GLP-1s Going Under-Covered, that talked about the multifaceted challenges and potential solutions surrounding these medications. Here are the first four of several key highlights we’ll be sharing over the coming weeks.
About the Presentation:
U.S. healthcare expenditure on GLP-1 medications surged beyond $50 billion in 2023, yet only 25% of employers currently cover GLP-1s for weight management. Employers are now at the forefront of a challenging healthcare decision- to cover or not to cover? They have to weigh happy and healthier employees with comprehensive health benefits and maintaining financial viability as a company. A true rock and a hard place. In response to this dilemma, new approaches to cost-management are being explored, including value-based pricing negotiations, implementing targeted patient assistance programs, and integration of comprehensive wraparound services to maintain treatment efficacy. Employers are having to go deep into long-term safety assessments and coverage decisions through risk analytics, while simultaneously shifting towards proactive, preventative weight management approaches. A balanced approach may just be the way out of this difficult dilemma.
About the Speaker:
Julia Hu
CEO & Co-founder, Lark Health
Julia founded Lark to make healthcare more personal and compassionate through A.I. Lark's A.I. chronic disease platform has treated nearly 2.5 million patients and offers unlimited chronic disease prevention and management to all patients. Lark's A.I. is fully medically reimbursed and has been named "10 Most Innovative Companies in the World" alongside Uber, Airbnb, and WeChat, "Most Innovative Digital Health Product of the Year" by Forrester Research, and "Top 10 Apps" out of all 2 million apps by Apple. A serial entrepreneur, Julia was natmed "Top 10 Women in Tech to Watch", "30 Under 30" by Inc. Magazine, and "17 Female Healthcare CEOs to Know", by Becker's Hospital Review. Prior to Lark, Julia founded two cleantech companies and was an EIR at Stanford's StartX Incubator. Julia has advised President Obama on innovation, is a faculty at Singularity University, and is on the board of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.