In the span of less than five years, providing abortion meds via telehealth has gone from illegal to normal.

By Q2 2024, an estimated 20% of all abortions were facilitated via telehealth, according to an October report from the nonprofit Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount initiative. There were 57,150 telehealth abortions in total that quarter, up from 22,430 during the same period a year before.

But this new prescription method is now facing legal threats.

States—first Texas in December, then Louisiana in January—separately sued New York doctor Margaret Carpenter and her practice Nightingale Medical, accusing the provider and clinic of violating their states’ near-total abortion bans by telehealth prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to patients residing in their states.

The lawsuits are the first major tests of shield laws, which protect abortion providers from out-of-state prosecution or investigations related to their abortion care services.

Keep reading here.—CC

One thing top of mind at the 2025 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Global Health Conference and Exhibition this week wasn’t who was there, but who wasn’t.

Some federal government officials canceled plans to attend the Las Vegas conference after the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “indefinitely” paused travel for its agencies—the CDC, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), FDA, NIH, and the Health Resources and Services Administration, to name a few—Hal Wolf, HIMSS president and CEO, confirmed on March 4 during a press briefing.

The US has also pulled out of a number of other commitments since the Trump administration took office—the World Health Organization, for one—and funding for future health research and projects remains uncertain.

“There’s little question that we are fundamentally in a time to listen, to understand, and frankly get ready to change at an unparalleled level,” Wolf said during an opening keynote.

Keep reading here.—CC

Weight loss drugs are all the rage in the pharmaceutical industry. Now, AbbVie wants a piece of the pie.

The North Chicago-based drug company announced a $350 million deal on March 3 to purchase Denmark-based biotech company Gubra and its weight loss medication, GUB014295, also known as Gubamy. The deal also left room for up to $1.9 billion in performance-based milestone payments.

Gubamy, a once-weekly injection, is currently in a Phase 1 clinical trial. It mimics the hormone amylin, which regulates blood sugar and appetite, and can send signals to the brain that suppress eating and slow digestion, according to a release.

This is different from competitors that create drugs to mimic the GLP-1 hormone, which has, so far, been the more popular approach for approved weight loss drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound. Novo’s new drug CagriSema, which combines Wegovy’s active ingredient with an amylin analog, is in a Phase 3 trial, and Lilly is working on an amylin-based drug that’s in Phase 2 trials.

Keep reading here.—CM