Healthcare's AI race heats up

GLP-1 medications reduce appetite and slow down digestion. Svitlana Pietukhova/Getty Images This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter. You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here. Winning is all about losing when it comes to weight-loss drugs. Eli Lilly thinks it has a REAL loser on its hands. The pharma giant published results from its first clinical trial pitting retatrutide, a next-generation injectable medication awaiting regulatory approval, against Ozempic. Patients with type 2 diabetes using retatrutide, or "reta" as some know it, lost, on average, more than twice as much weight (47 pounds) as those on the highest dose of Ozempic (21 pounds) during 16 months. BI's Hilary Brueck has all the details on the trial here. Dubbed "King Kong" or "triple G" because it mimics three different hormones, some believe the weight loss that users experience using reta could rival bariatric surgery. Some of you might be well aware of reta. Even though it's still in clinical trials, copycat peptide sellers have flooded the gray market with knock-off versions. Gym bros, in particular, have praised the drug for its ability to shred fat quickly. Another corner of the healthcare industry is touting a big push into AI. Ro CEO Zach Reitano spoke to Hilary about the digital healthcare company's new AI agent. (By the way, Zach is one of our speakers at The Long Play this afternoon! Follow our coverage here.) Robin can leverage info like your prescriptions or wearable data to make health suggestions. That includes changing medication doses or schedules to reduce side effects. Ro's push illustrates the race between healthcare companies and AI giants looking to use the technology to better serve their clients. Companies like Ro benefit from being experts in the space and having easy access to patient data, but sometimes lack the technical know-how of their AI-based peers. AI companies have the opposite problem. A powerful tech stack can lack subject-matter expertise. The issue isn't specific to healthcare. It's taking place across industries, and it's why data has become such a premium. But healthcare, with its privacy concerns, regulations, and high stakes (people's health!), makes it a tricky balance. OpenAI even has a doctor-whisperer to help it navigate AI's medical minefield. Read the original article on Business Insider