• California: Google's health tech company Verily announced plans to phase out its chronic disease management app Onduo over the next year and a half. According to the company, Onduo will be replaced by a new, "evolved" app called Lightpath Metabolic, which is expected to be available in 2026. Lightpath will include programs for patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes and offer prescriptions of GLP-1 drugs. The app will also leverage AI and data from devices, including continuous glucose monitoring devices, to personalize patient care. "Creating tighter-knit connections between research and care, and leveraging our precision health platform as the vehicle through which we do that, I think is very much in line with our strategy," Verily's chief product officer Myoung Cha said. "The Lightpath launch is important because it represents really our prospective view about how care delivery and chronic disease management should be done." (Trang, STAT+ [subscription required], 6/11)
• District of Columbia: The Biden administration on Tuesday proposed a new rule to remove medical debt from credit reports — a decision that could impact over 15 million Americans. Under the proposed rule, healthcare providers would be prohibited from sharing medical debt information with loan providers. Loan providers also wouldn't be allowed to factor in medical information when granting loans. According to Vice President Kamala Harris, the rule would improve "the financial health and well-being of millions of Americans." Harris also noted that the proposed rule was part of a broader effort by the administration to address medical debt. So far, the Biden administration has forgiven $650 million in medical debt. The public comment period on the proposed rule will go through Aug. 12, and administration officials who spoke to the New York Times on the condition of anonymity said that it will most likely not take effect until early next year. (Kanno-Youngs/Kliff, New York Times, 6/11; Wingrove/Gardner, Bloomberg/Modern Healthcare, 6/11; Reed, Axios, 6/12)
• District of Columbia: In a new report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) proposed a new definition of long COVID to help streamline diagnosis and treatment of the condition. According to NASEM, long COVID should be defined as an infection-related chronic condition that develops after COVID-19 and is present for at least three months "as a continuous, relapsing and remitting, or progressive disease state that affects one or more organ systems." The definition does not require a patient to have laboratory confirmation or other proof of a COVID-19 infection. Harvey Fineberg, president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and chair of the NASEM committee, said the committee wants the new definition of long COVID to be adopted by all federal, state, and local government authorities, as well as clinicians, medical organizations, and more. Currently, several organizations, including CDC, NIH, and WHO, all have separate definitions of long COVID. "We believe this definition deserves wide dissemination and implementation," Fineberg said. "It is important also to monitor how well the definition works in practice: what problems emerge, how well it can be utilized both nationally and in promoting understanding globally about the role and relevance of long COVID in the lives of patients." (DePeau-Wilson, MedPage Today, 6/11)

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