A new digital tool is stepping onto the healthcare stage to tackle the rising costs of GLP-1 medications.
Lark Health has named Matthew Gibbs as president to guide this ambitious venture. As former chief pharmacy officer at Blue Shield of California, Gibbs brings a blend of pharmacy experience and technology vision to the challenge.
He described his move as a way to merge his industry background with newfound excitement for artificial intelligence. “It let me really stretch into the dev tech side with artificial intelligence, but leveraging my knowledge of the PBM, health plan industry in terms of their major challenges, both clinically and from a cost standpoint, with both cardiometabolic and, in particular, weight management at this stage,” Gibbs explained.
The LarkVantage platform is built with the goal of making life easier for payers conducting eligibility checks on patients who might qualify for GLP-1 therapies. Instead of slow, frustrating exchanges with providers, the system supplies real time biometric data.
That means prior authorizations and other key management reviews could happen much faster.
Innovation in Managing GLP-1 Use
Gibbs pointed out there has been a sharp spike in GLP-1 requests marked as urgent, particularly in the area of weight loss treatments. Health plans must process these quickly to meet compliance standards.
LarkVantage was developed with this exact speed in mind. Rather than relying on laborious tasks like faxing physicians or searching through medical records, the digital platform delivers direct access to necessary information. In Gibbs’s words, “You’re not faxing to the doc, you’re not calling to verify, you’re not trying to dig through an EMR. It really provides you with that real access.”
Currently, Lark Health is running pilots with a set of national and regional pharmacy benefit management firms to test the system’s capabilities. The company has made it clear that AI-driven programs for GLP-1 obesity management are the foundation of its future plans.
What sets LarkVantage apart, said Gibbs, is its independence from the traditional push and pull of payer and provider incentives. “We’re not a PBM, we’re not a health plan,” he stated. “At the end of the day, we’re an AI digital healthcare company that can leverage what we’re learning and the data that we’re receiving, and power that for the end user.”
For now, LarkVantage is focused on the GLP-1 sector. Gibbs hinted at broader applications, noting that the system could eventually expand to areas like oncology by seamlessly incorporating lab and testing data.
He wants the team to aim for excellence as they rollout. “But I think it’s got an endless application,” Gibbs added, as similar approaches are being discussed in AI chatbot struggles with medical advice scenarios.
