US health giant scraps weight-oriented Juniper to launch women’s health clinic

US telehealth giant Hims & Hers Health is bringing its women’s health brand, Hers, to Australia, retiring Juniper, the weight-loss service Sydney start-up Eucalyptus launched in 2021.

The switch completes the company’s $1.6 billion takeover of Eucalyptus earlier this year. Eucalyptus’ men’s health brand, Pilot, moved to Hims in August.

Eucalyptus co-founder and former chief executive Tim Doyle, now senior vice-president of international at Hims & Hers, said Hers would turn Juniper into a full women’s health clinic, adding hair loss and menopause programs.

“Juniper’s been historically very weight-oriented, with a sprinkle of menopause,” Doyle said.

He expected some customers to be put off by the switch to an American brand, but said the change would be a net positive within one to two years.

“It would be dumb to say there’s going to not be any friction on day one,” he said.

Doyle said Pilot had become “a relic of a bit of a different time”, adding that the local brands lacked “the same ring” as Hims & Hers.

Hims & Hers vice-president of product, international, Rebecca Holdt said existing Juniper patients would keep their Australian practitioners and care team, and their treatment plans, pricing and medications would carry over.

Gus Wood will run the Australian business as general manager, with Matt Vickers, a GP who has worked at Eucalyptus since 2019, as chief medical officer of Hims & Hers Australia.

Eucalyptus employs about 250 people in Australia, Doyle said, and the team had grown at the same rate since the takeover as it did before. He said the acquisition was “about capabilities and growth”.

Part of that is artificial intelligence. Doyle said Hims & Hers had hired much of the applied AI and engineering team from Cruise, the driverless car start-up, to build tools for health coaching and care management, and the Australian business was already using some of them.

“The biggest change happening at the moment is people can get reasonably good quality health advice for free in a matter of seconds from the LLMs [large language models],” Doyle said.

In August, Hims & Hers rebuilt its US Hers app so weight-loss patients deal with an AI, their care team and their doctor in a single conversation, with the AI passing questions that need clinical judgment to a provider. The company’s fine print says the AI’s responses “can make mistakes” and are not a medical diagnosis.

Australian customers will get a new Hers app from today.

Holdt did not say whether Australian patients’ health data would stay in Australia. She said the Hers team would work with Juniper staff “to make sure data remains safely stored in accordance with all applicable laws”.

Hers will prescribe TGA-approved weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro when clinically appropriate, with programs starting at $349 a month. The menopause program costs $99 for an initial consultation, with treatment from $17 a month, and the hair loss program has a $24.99 initial consultation fee.

In the US, Hims & Hers built much of its weight-loss business on compounded GLP-1s – cheaper copies of Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro – made by pharmacies. Australia banned such compounded versions from October 2024, and Doyle said the US business is now predominantly selling on-label medications.

The company did not say how many Australian women are on a weight-loss program through Juniper.

Hims & Hers is known in the US for heavy consumer marketing, including Super Bowl advertising. Australia bans advertising prescription medicines directly to the public, and Holdt said Hers would focus on educating women about their symptoms rather than promoting medicines.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners said subscription telehealth services focused on prescribing risked putting financial return ahead of patient safety.

“Subscription type telehealth services are not a substitute for the comprehensive care that you get from a specialist GP that knows a patient and their history,” RACGP president Michael Wright said.

Wright said medicines such as GLP-1s and menopausal hormone therapy needed careful assessment and regular monitoring. He said fragmented care had previously led to patients being prescribed weight-loss drugs when their medical history showed clear reasons not to. He did not refer to Juniper or Hers.

Hers practitioners assess patients in a phone consultation before prescribing. Jessica Shepherd, Hers’ chief medical officer and a US-registered obstetrician-gynaecologist, said the company could share consultation notes and treatment plans with a patient’s GP if she consented.

Doyle also welcomed calls for telehealth-specific regulation as a grey market had emerged, and expected national telehealth standards within 12 months.

“It is so easy to start a digital health business at the moment, and so better regulatory frameworks for how and who can start those is probably going to be a really good thing,” he said.

Hims & Hers is now looking at several markets in Europe and South America, Doyle said. “I think we’ll have more to say there in the coming weeks and months.”

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.