Function Health has won over consumers. When will it publish evidence?

Mario Aguilar covers technology in health care, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, wearable devices, telehealth, and digital therapeutics. His stories explore how tech is changing the practice of health care and the business and policy challenges to realizing tech’s promise. He’s also the co-author of the free, twice weekly STAT Health Tech newsletter. You can reach Mario on Signal at mariojoze.13.

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Function Health, which offers members nutrition, supplement, and other lifestyle guidance based on a huge battery of lab tests and body scans, announced it raised $298 million from investors. The company is also launching a chatbot that will offer recommendations and explanations of test results based on user questions. 

Function claims hundreds of thousands of members so obviously they’ve managed to convince a large number consumers that there is value to tracking granular data about what’s in their blood, and to the company’s recommendations. But there is light evidence for some of what Function does. For example, the company offers testing for cancer and coronary artery calcium that are not usually recommended for people at low risk of disease.