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Caroline Catherman

Healthcare Brew delivers the latest news and trends in healthcare.

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Angel Foster only enters the US via Canada, where she’s a professor. She doesn’t drive a car outside Massachusetts. And she doesn’t visit Florida, South Carolina, or other states that ban or restrict abortion.

These are the precautions this MD takes as founder of the Massachusetts Abortion Access Project (the MAP). It’s a service that prescribes and ships abortion medication via telehealth under Massachusetts’s shield law, which protects those physically present in Massachusetts from out-of-state penalties for accessing or assisting with abortion care.

Legal challenges to providing abortions via shield law have popped up over the last few months, but Foster and others 

. Foster envisions a future with even more providers working similarly from other states that have comprehensive shield laws.

“We have been trying to identify folks in those states who are willing to provide [this care], and then work with them to build out a practice so that they don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” Foster said. “They can piggyback on a lot of the things that we’ve learned.”

Twenty-two other states and Washington, DC, currently have shield laws, according to the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. Eight of those—California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington—

 protect telehealth abortion even if the recipient is located in a state where it’s illegal for them to get care.

The Supreme Court struck down constitutional protections for abortion 

. The MAP was founded in September 2023. It serves 2,000 to 2,500 patients a month, 95% of whom are from states with bans and restrictions, Foster said. In 2024, about 10,000 abortions in the US were provided under shield laws each month, according to the nonprofit research organization the Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount tracker.

Though not a prescriber herself, Foster still faces a risk of prosecution if she leaves the state of Massachusetts. The MAP’s five prescribers know the risks, too. “I think we all went into working in the shield law space with the expectation that there would be a lawsuit at some point,” Foster said.

Beyond Foster’s practice, telehealth abortions are growing rapidly, making up to 

 by the end of 2024, compared to 19% at the end of 2023 and 7% at the end of 2022, according to #WeCount.

 found that this form of treatment is just as safe and effective as in-person abortion.

No one has been jailed for providing a telehealth abortion to someone in a state where the procedure is banned.

Recently, however, 15 attorneys general from banned states signed a 

“These laws are blatant attempts to interfere with states’ ability to enforce criminal laws within their borders and disrupt our constitutional structure,” they wrote.

 against a New York doctor who allegedly prescribed pills to a minor in the state. So far, New York’s governor has held strong and refused to turn the doctor over for prosecution. This, and the MAP’s close working relationship with the Massachusetts government, gives Foster hope.

“We’re feeling very confident about the ability of the Massachusetts shield law to protect us,” she said.

White pills floating across between two phones with a checkmark on one screen. Credit: Anna Kim

Abortion shield law provider encourages others to follow her lead

Recent laws have challenged the practice, but that isn’t deterring providers.

Maia Anderson

Chain drug stores like CVS and Walgreens no longer rank No. 1 on the pharmacy popularity list.

Patients increasingly prefer mail-order, digital, and supermarket pharmacies, according to consumer insights advisory firm JD Power’s 2025 US Pharmacy Study released July 29.

The study, conducted from May 2024 to May 2025, included responses from 14,700 pharmacy customers who had filled a prescription within the last 12 months.

The increasing satisfaction with alternatives to chain drug stores “helps set the stage for a tipping point in the pharmacy space,” Christopher Lis, managing director of JD Power’s global healthcare practice, said in a statement.

According to the study, supermarkets like New York-based Wegmans and Florida-based Publix and mass market retailers like Costco and Sam’s Club are outperforming chain drugstores when it comes to staffing levels, patients’ trust in their pharmacist, and how quickly they fill prescriptions.

Mail-order pharmacies, on the other hand, are growing in popularity, thanks to digital features like apps, websites, and texts—and they save patients time and money, according to the survey.

But despite digital pharmacies becoming more popular, most companies have pretty low brand recognition, JD Power found. The results show only 67% of pharmacy customers knew about digital pharmacy brands, and while 58% of that pool said they were “aware of” Amazon Pharmacy, other brands were not recognized widely.

Health Mart ranked No. 1 in satisfaction scores for brick-and-mortar chain drug store pharmacies, with Good Neighbor Pharmacy coming in second.

Sam’s Club came in first place for mass merchandiser pharmacies, and Costco came in second.

Wegmans took first place for supermarket pharmacies, with Publix ranking second.

PillPack by Amazon Pharmacy took first for mail-order/digital pharmacy, with Kaiser Permanente Pharmacy taking second.

Asian woman reading the ingredient label while shopping for multivitamin and health supplements on shelf in supermarket.

Patients increasingly prefer digital, supermarket pharmacies over chain drug stores

We know being popular isn’t everything, but… 

 for the past four years, virtual care platform Current Health is reclaiming its independence.

In a June 24 blog post, company co-founder Christopher McGhee announced plans to return as CEO of the newly autonomous company, which was founded in 2014 and helps health systems move patient care into home settings. Best Buy purchased the company for $400 million in 2021, though neither party disclosed the financial details of the 

McGhee spoke with Healthcare Brew about his plans for Current Health as he takes the helm once again. He told us he wants to focus the company on treating acute and complex patient populations as opposed to long-term chronic condition management, as that’s where he believes it can “most move the needle on outcomes for the patient and cost.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What changes can we expect from Current Health now that you’re an independent company again?

I’m really trying to take us back to our scrappy startup roots. I want us to innovate and build out our product with urgency and deliver the absolute best frontline experience to our clinical users and to our patients. I want to see rapid innovation in what we do, in building our product, and expanding our product.

How do we continue to build out our health monitoring services and clinical team and what that team does?

How do we use more AI and automation to allow these programs to cost-efficiently scale? The world is dramatically different today than the one it was when I sold the company in 2021. The AI technologies that are out have fundamentally changed the game for how some of these services can be done.

How do we orchestrate all of the technology and all of the services that are going on in the home?

Then the fourth one is the business model: How do we make sure that it’s aligned to the way our customer makes money?

You have partnerships with more than 40 health systems, including big names like Mount Sinai and Mass General Brigham. What’s your strategy when it comes to deciding which systems to partner with? 

We want to work with any organization that wants to deliver healthcare in a different way and wants to deliver more of that healthcare in a community or home setting. Some of the most innovative and forward-thinking healthcare organizations are really small, but they’re making dramatic changes to care in their local communities. That can have a pretty dramatic impact on local cost and outcome improvement. We certainly aren’t just looking to partner with the biggest.

In your post announcing your return as CEO, you mentioned you want to build Current into the “world’s largest healthcare organization.” What are your biggest challenges to meeting that goal?

Honestly, just the status quo. When we started Current Health, there wasn’t necessarily a ton of acute and complex care in the home. Hospital-at-home existed, but it didn’t really exist at any scale. Fast-forward nine years, and it’s a seismic shift in the way healthcare is delivered in this country. Now all of the sudden, people are culturally and psychologically ready to deliver more care in the home than they were five, 10 years ago.

But I think the biggest challenge still remains the cultural change around moving from a world that’s very centric around large brick-and-mortar facilities to one where healthcare is delivered in the community and the patient’s own home. How do we get more solid payment models like the waiver, which 

 to be done? It’s a temporary waiver that 

Headshot of Current Health CEO and co-founder Christopher McGhee

Current Health CEO Christopher McGhee talks company plans after separating from Best Buy 

The digital health company is recently single, and Christopher McGhee has big plans. 

Current Health CEO talks company plans after separating from Best Buy 

Medicare codes for digital mental health treatments were used for 99 patients across 184 visits in Q1 2025, according to a new report on this multibillion-dollar industry.

The report—shared exclusively with Healthcare Brew by analytics firm Komodo Health—analyzed deidentified data from more than 330 million patients, looking at the use of three new codes introduced on Jan. 1. The codes allow providers to bill Medicare for the cost of supplying and treating a patient with one of seven FDA-cleared 

 (DTx) for conditions like anxiety and depression.

This is the first year Medicare has offered coverage, and experts previously 

 the DTx industry’s success hinges on whether providers use it. If they do, other payers may also 

 Without widespread payer coverage, device makers are struggling to profit off their products. Insurance denials fueled the 2023 

 of DTx company Pear Therapeutics, its CEO said on 

 at the time. That same year, digital medicine company Akili Interactive switched from a prescription to 

 model following its own failed battle for payer coverage.

The good news is that while uptake may seem low, it’s growing.

The number of visits associated with the codes jumped from 48 in January to 85 in March, Evan Woodward, MD and senior clinical product manager at Komodo Health, told us.

“The limited uptake likely reflects ongoing confusion around code applicability and reimbursement pathways—common barriers we see with new digital tools in clinical practice,” Woodward said.

Andy Molnar, head of digital health at the American Telemedicine Association’s advocacy organization ATA Action, told us this is a promising start. 

“We continue to be excited about the movement,” Molnar said.

David Cooper, executive director of professional group Therapists in Tech, told us he wishes uptake was higher, though he noted that, like all new concepts, there’s a learning curve. Most of this software requires prescriptions from people not used to prescribing, like psychologists or social workers.

Cooper added these codes also use a “buy-and-bill” model, meaning providers pay up front and are reimbursed only after submitting a claim to Medicare.

Medicare hasn’t set one national rate for these devices yet. The rate is decided by Medicare’s local contractors in each region, meaning providers in different parts of the country may be reimbursed at different rates or may not know what they’ll be paid at all when they submit codes.

If Medicare eventually sets a generous national rate, Cooper expects DTx to “boom.” If not, he expects more companies to declare bankruptcy or choose not to go the DTx route at all.

“The reimbursement piece is the make-or-break for digital therapeutics,” he said. “Why would a company go through all of the extra work of FDA [clearance] if there is not equivalent reward for that?”

Mashup of a phone, brain, sky, pill, and healthcare symbol

Data shows growing use of new Medicare codes for digital therapeutics

New billing codes drew 184 claims in Q1 2025, data shows.

Cassie McGrath

 products, it seems like new technology is announced every day that promises to change how healthcare is delivered.

John Beadle, co-founder and managing partner at health tech venture capital (VC) firm Aegis Ventures, chatted with Healthcare Brew to sort through the noise, discussing which areas of investment he’s most excited about and the industry’s unique challenges.

Since it opened in 2020, Aegis has co-founded and launched five companies that collectively raised $68 million in total. It most 

 Avandra Imaging, which secured $17.5 million in Series A funding this February.

In 2024, funding for digital health startups in the US hit $10.1b in 497 deals, according to digital health strategy group and venture fund 

Beadle shared that Aegis spent the last year meeting with teams from the 11 health systems it works with—including California-based Stanford Health Care, New York-based Northwell Health, and Tennessee-based Vanderbilt Health—to see what their tech and AI priorities were.

This spurred the creation of five key themes for the VC firm to explore:

Using AI to create “personalized care companions” and reimagine the patient experience

Automating repeatable manual workflows, especially in the back office

Creating new biomarkers for improved disease prediction

Accelerating clinical trials with more real-world data

Building a more “sustainable financial future” for health systems through partnerships

“We’ve been quite busy looking to really scale up our activities in the second half of this year,” Beadle said. “It’s looking like we’ll launch two to three new companies in the next couple of months.”

Beadle said he anticipates generative AI will become “extraordinarily powerful” across the industry—from health systems to pharma to payers—with advancements in back office automation, prediction and prognosis, and medical devices and robotics.

 in February that 2 in 3 physicians were already using AI in 2024, according to its survey.

“Everything is transforming dramatically because we’ve spent decades and decades building a set of foundational technologies that have gotten us to this point, and they’re now converging in a really unique, exciting way,” Beadle said, adding that new tech will help save costs for health systems.

 estimated AI adoption could save $200 billion to $360 billion each year in healthcare, based on the 2019 spend.

Though, Beadle added, this is his “optimistic picture.” There are still challenges to contend with, such as the 

 on AI in the field and “harmful side effects that could result” from issues like 

Tariffs and regulations and budgets, oh my!

Of course, you can’t look into investment opportunities without considering the impact tariffs might have.

Beadle said Aegis has portfolio companies that have been impacted by tariffs. “It’s definitely led us to make decisions for things like if [companies] need to import medical devices before a big tariff deadline.”

CFO Brew reported tariffs could cost businesses across the US 

 each year. Health techs leaders previously 

 investors were more reluctant to fund companies due to market instability and potentially rising costs.

Further, cuts to the National Institutes of Health grants, concerns about the 

, and anticipated cuts to Medicaid under the One Big Beautiful Bill “have created a really challenging environment for a lot of our provider partners,” he said.

Health insurers may also be affected, as the bill doesn’t extend enhanced premium tax credits for ACA marketplace health plans. As a result, 

 premiums are on track to rise (people who pay $60 a month now will pay $105 a month next year, according to the outlet) alongside an increasing uninsurance rate.

“We’re in an environment where margins are compressing, and because of that, folks are really focused on true painkillers that ideally can both increase revenue and decrease costs and drive very quick, tangible ROI,” he said.

Correction 07/24/2025: This story has been updated to clarify that not all of the funding for Avandra Imaging and the other companies mentioned came exclusively from Aegis Ventures.

Two hands shaking surrounded by investing visual elements

Aegis Ventures co-founder John Beadle shares the 5 areas of healthcare he’s most interested in

Providers are cutting innovation budgets to keep up with Medicaid cuts and tariffs, the investment exec says. 

Aegis Ventures co-founder shares the 5 areas of healthcare he’s most interested in

CRISPR‑Cas9, a gene-editing tool originally part of bacterial immune defense, has been used for everything from a “de-extinction” of 

 to the creation of human-compatible pig organs to the controversial—and 

 the first-ever CRISPR-based medicine, exagamglogene autotemcel (brand name Casgevy), to treat sickle cell anemia. Beyond that, there are dozens of 

 that use CRISPR in treatments for other conditions like chronic Hepatitis B, lymphoma, and urinary tract infections.

All this happened relatively quickly after researchers Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who submitted the first CRISPR patent in 2012, published a landmark paper that same year describing how clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) and CRISPR-associated Protein 9 could be repurposed as “programmable DNA scissors,” kickstarting a 

“It’s really a ‘before and after’ in the history of humankind,” Isabel Esain Garcia, a postdoctoral researcher in Doudna’s lab at the University of California, Berkeley, told Healthcare Brew. “I definitely think that the future is going to be CRISPR-based clinical [applications].”

But while this technology has catapulted medicine and research forward, the rollout of CRISPR-based therapies—the technique’s most high-stakes application—remains complex. The next frontier is not just what CRISPR can do, but how to get it efficiently and equitably to patients.

About a year ago, the sickle cell community was “buzzing,” Crawford Strunk, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist and vice chief medical officer of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, told Healthcare Brew. “We had [Casgevy] approved. It was great.”

, in part because companies that perform the therapy are still ramping up capacity.

The process is also very involved and time-consuming for patients. They must stop their medications and undergo preparatory therapies for at least three months before their stem cells can be extracted. The stem cells are then sent off to the lab, where technicians use CRISPR to make a customized gene edit that can stop cells from sickling and test whether the edit worked—a process that can take up to six months, according to Casgevy’s official website.

Patients subsequently undergo chemotherapy and then, finally, their modified cells can be transplanted back into their bodies. The full process can take up to a year for patients, Strunk said.

The treatment also doesn’t work for everyone. For instance, a patient’s marrow can sometimes be so unhealthy that CRISPR can’t sufficiently fix it, Strunk said. Casgevy-treated stem cells have to be at a “certain level of transformed” for the FDA to 

 to be put back into a patient. Some patients find out only after undergoing months of prep and collection that they don’t meet the cut, he said.

“There’s access issues in terms of who the right patients are. There’s access issues to the available centers…Can you afford to do [the preparation] for a year before you get gene therapy?” he said.

There’s also the cost: $2.2 million per patient for the one-time infusion therapy. This poses a “major ethical issue in terms of equitable access and global health,” researchers argued in an October 2024 

Vertex Pharmaceuticals, the biotech company that makes Casgevy, has estimated about 16,000 patients ages 12 and older are eligible for its therapy. But by December 2024, one year after its approval, a little more than 40 patients worldwide had begun having their stem cells collected for the treatment.

CRISPR’s utility goes far beyond human genome manipulation. Its ability to control gene expression has been crucial in research labs.

Huirong Xie, a research specialist and codirector of Michigan State University’s Transgenic and Genome Editing Facility, told Healthcare Brew her team uses CRISPR to create animal and cell models for scientists to study diseases and test out potential cures.

, but CRISPR is a cheaper and quicker gene-editing tool than those that came before it, Xie added.

Hana Totary-Jain, associate professor at University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, told us she worked on research that used CRISPR to turn on a large gene in order to understand what it does. That 

 more about that gene’s role in protecting the placenta from viral infections.

“It’s a very fundamental tool for scientists to use to answer many questions,” Totary-Jain said.

in vivo gene therapy, which would use CRISPR to make changes to a patient’s DNA while it’s inside their body rather than removing and modifying cells outside it. He thinks this could be more accessible and potentially cheaper than current ex vivo gene therapies like Casgevy, and could eliminate the need 

But in vivo editing brings new concerns about accidentally affecting other parts of the genome and body.

“Off-target effects can elicit deleterious changes to the genome, which could result in new pathologies,” Catherine Kendig, associate professor of philosophy at Michigan State University, told us via email.

Esain Garcia said the Doudna Lab is one of many 

 to find the best and safest method to deliver CRISPR treatments alongside discovering and developing novel gene and epigenome editors. 

“Definitely one of the biggest challenges is to make sure that you can develop a technology that is going to be very precise and on target,” Esain Garcia said.

A researcher performs a CRISPR/Cas9 process at the Max-Delbrueck-Centre for Molecular Medicine in 2018.

CRISPR’s new era: Hope, hype, and hard truths

It’s cutting-edge medicine—literally.

Are you wearing a smart watch or smart ring right now? How about smart glasses or a hearing aid?

, and the market for them has grown exponentially in recent years—from $20 billion in 2015 to $109.3 billion in 2023.

Some of the devices, like watches and rings, collect user health data such as heart rates and blood oxygen levels. And while 

 they were comfortable with their physician having access to their health data according to a July 2022 survey from the American Medical Association, 82% of 2,414 US residents in a 2022 Trusted Future 

 expressed concern about data privacy outside clinics.

But data privacy laws are lacking in the US compared with the 

. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA), a well-known patient privacy law that falls on hospitals and health plans, generally doesn’t apply to wearable companies.

 with data privacy laws, there’s no federal requirement for wearable companies to protect health data. They can even legally sell it to third parties.

In the face of this, data privacy experts told Healthcare Brew that more transparent companies can build stronger brand loyalty among users and gain a competitive edge.

Issues with data privacy have cost many businesses, experts said.

, which has access to users’ DNA information, experienced a data breach in 2023 that cost them 

 in a settlement. In March of this year, the company 

“Consumers flock to companies that advertise and make sure that they’re fully transparent around their privacy practices,” Ron De Jesus, field chief privacy officer at data privacy company Transcend, told us.

Customers were also urged to leave period-tracking and fertility apps following the 

 due to concerns that data about their cycles could be shared with states and law enforcement agencies. 

“If they say they’re not going to share my information, [and] I later find out that they do share my information, that’s going to be a breach of trust for me, which may cause me to lose affinity for that brand,” Pat McGloin, managing director of health and life sciences at health advertising company Merge, said.

It all comes down to user agreements. You know, those things that no one actually reads. (And by no one, we mean approximately 9% of users, according to the 

 that if people actually sat down to read these agreements, it would take each person an estimated 76 work days (based on the average length of privacy policies, an estimate of how many people agree to them, and average reading times) and cost the economy $781 billion in lost wages because of time spent reading.

That’s because they can be long and complicated, Nicky Watson, founder of UK-based tech company Syrenis, told Healthcare Brew. “When you have a bottle of water you want to know that it’s safe to drink. You don’t want to have to be a chemist to test the water to find out if it’s safe to drink,” she said.

The agreements often don’t give users any flexibility to negotiate the terms, either. It’s a yes-or-no answer, and if you already bought the device, you are more likely to say yes, Watson added.

Ultimately though, experts like McGloin say more transparency is the way to go.

This means there’s an opportunity for companies to go beyond regulations, be more transparent, and build brand trust for a competitive advantage, McGloin said. About 88% of 13,802 adults across 14 countries 

 they consider brand trust before making a purchase.

Apple, for example, has long user agreements, but allows users to go back in and adjust settings to prevent information from being shared with other companies, Watson said.

“Brands that are transparent, that prioritize trust and building a relationship with you, they actually have the business advantage,” Watson said. “You’re much more likely to stick with who you trust, build on that, and potentially give them more information.”

Correction 05/01/2025: This piece has been updated to note that Nicky Watson is the founder, not CEO, of Syrenis.

The new Apple Watch series 10 is displayed during an Apple special event at Apple headquarters on September 09, 2024 in Cupertino, California. (Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)