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Headway Therapy Patients Forced to Scan Their Faces to Keep Getting Care
- cm2012 5mo agoIsn't gov ID + selfie check the standard for a majority of online healthcare in the last few years?
- exabrial 5mo agoNope.
- sleazebreeze 5mo agoWhat exactly is the concern here by Headway? Are they afraid AI deep fakes will be receiving therapy? Obviously they are doing data collection and selling training data of emotional conversations to AI labs. But what's their stated justification? I can't figure it out.
- germinalphrase 5mo agoinsurance compliance?
- banannaeugene 5mo ago[dead]
- smelendez 5mo agoProbably medication fraud. They mention heightened scrutiny around controlled substances (with amphetamines for ADHD as an example) on the FAQ. https://help.headway.co/hc/en-us/articles/29673299878676-Documenting-controlled-substances-prescriptions-during-session-confirmation#h_01J67J9KV1ABXECBE2FYRGA5AC https://help.headway.co/hc/en-us/articles/29673299878676-Doc... The risk is that a drug dealer or addict pays people to use their identities and possibly insurance info, pretends to be them and to have ADHD in telehealth sessions, and stockpiles Adderall.
- kotaKat 5mo ago[flagged]
- sonofhans 5mo agoGovernment-issued IDs work and human verification of them is largely successful. This is not about correct verification, it’s about cheap machine-based verification. The dehumanization of it is part of how they plan to make money. So yes verification is needed. We can do that just fine without more facial recognition intruding into everyday affairs.
- kotaKat 5mo ago[flagged]
- Traubenfuchs 5mo ago> Viagra, Ozempic and ketamine, legal meth You sound condescending but each of those substances is currently positively life changing to MILLIONS of people every day. Viagra can give you your sex life back, ozempic can give you a healthy body again and ketamin and legal meth can return you to being a functional and happy human.
- skeeter2020 5mo agoand each of these substances is widely mis-prescribed, abused and has huge illegal markets. Just because the OP obviously referred to this scenario doesn't mean they discounted your interpretation of big pharma. Also since you want to promote a super narrow perspective, Ozempic is a type-2 diabetes drug that has pivoted to the more lucrative weight-lose market and Viagra a pretty ho-hum hypertension drug that makes a better boner pill, so your takes are technically "side-effects"
- smelendez 5mo agoI was trying to think what the least intrusive option here would be. You need to verify that the patient has ID matching their name and face, which could be done offline by a notary or other trusted party if a patient prefers. But you also need to confirm the person showing up for the online sessions is actually the verified patient, and I'm not sure how you do that to maximize privacy. I guess you could take a photo at the in-person verification, have the medical provider sign off that it's the same person as their patient, and then destroy the photo?
- mystraline 5mo agoSome people lie about identity when getting mental health. They also direct pay cash, and no insurance. Pilots and US govt cleared people go through hell, or get their permissions revoked if you try to get mental health. So the answer is to pay out of pocket and lie. HOWEVER with Peter Thiel's invasive facial recog shit being forced means that even if you want to remain anonymous, now you cant. As for misappropriation of drugs, that can also easily happen in person. Some Thielian shit isnt going to stop that.
- FireBeyond 5mo agoMeanwhile, on Hims, you fill out a form prior to meeting with the physician via a text-only chat. And if you filled it out "wrong", then the physician tells you that if these were your final answers, you wouldn't meet criteria, but if you had, say, answered x instead of y for q3 and b instead of c for q5, you can get the meds. "Would you like to review your answers for a few minutes?"
- kotaKat 5mo agoYup, 'cause if the noctor prescribes the script, only then does the noctor gets their paycheck.
- dccooper 5mo agoOh dang - I actually know the answer here. TL:DR - Regulations are changing / unclear around prescribing medications online and this is them trying to get ahead of it. Headway’s new facial-scan requirement is probably less about one company getting weird with biometrics and more about where telehealth regulation is heading: with COVID-era prescribing flexibilities, companies like Done abused controlled substance prescribing to the point that the DEA is now signaling that they will demand stronger identity proofing for controlled-substance prescribing. But the implementation matters. Could you do all this through other means? Definitely. Would it scale as easily / get in Peter Thiel and VC's good graces by using their tool? Who knows. All to say this is probably more about changing regulations in how care is provided online - and more companies should be expected to follow suit when it comes to prescribing controlled substances.
- zdragnar 5mo agoSurely this would affect all online prescribers and third party certification companies, who have been using government ID card verification for years. I don't think biometric data is necessary at all here.
- skeeter2020 5mo agoWhat seems more likely for a startup doing online mental health to collect biometric data? 1. "getting ahead" of potentially changing regulations. 2. collecting data they don't need because it's (a) easier and (b) never know when you'll need it!
- mapt 5mo agoIf it turns out that all recordings of your therapy sessions are being absorbed by Palantir and then get leaked to the darkweb, do we execute this CEO on livestream by boat torture, or do they offer you a link good for six months of free identity theft monitoring, and a free session to talk about feelings of violation and loss of your privacy? The thing you need in therapy is a degree of trust. I'm not sure I would have sufficient trust even if we stipulated the boat torture.
- 3vo-ai 5mo ago[flagged]
- cortesoft 5mo agoCould be insurance or prescription drug related. Need to make sure the person getting care is a real person and who they say they are?
- zdragnar 5mo agoThis has been a solved problem for some time now. There are already third party solutions for this based around verifying government issued ID cards and therapist attestation of who they visited with in their notes. Biometric data isn't needed at all.
- moffkalast 5mo agoPlease drink verification can to continue.
- pryelluw 5mo agoYou mean verification suppositories.
- stronglikedan 5mo agoI mean, if that's the only way to verify, it ain't the worst way...
- hdwythrowaway 5mo agoI interviewed with Headway. Fun fact: a bunch of their engineers are ex-Palantir and they use Foundry as part of their data platform. Don't trust these people with your mental health data.
- mountainriver 5mo agoThat is unbelievably terrifying
- next_xibalba 5mo ago[flagged]
- antisthenes 5mo agoDo you know anything about Palantir and their CEO's stances?
- kovek 5mo agoWhat if the organization who tries to verify sends a request on an app on the user’s iPhone (or whatever device can do the same), and the user scans their face with FaceID to produce a file send to the organization, which will then send that file to Apple to ask if the file represents the right person? I trust Apple so that works for me.