5/29/2026 at 2:15:41 PM
by pavel_lishin
5/29/2026 at 3:48:32 PM
I 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.
by hdwythrowaway
5/29/2026 at 4:21:29 PM
That is unbelievably terrifyingby mountainriver
5/29/2026 at 6:59:50 PM
[flagged]by next_xibalba
5/29/2026 at 7:03:21 PM
Do you know anything about Palantir and their CEO's stances?by antisthenes
5/29/2026 at 3:20:06 PM
What 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.
by sleazebreeze
5/29/2026 at 3:27:24 PM
Probably 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-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.
by smelendez
5/29/2026 at 6:27:54 PM
How many people would you need to stack up in therapy just to get enough Adderall to sell to make money? One person is only going to be able to get a 30 day supply at a time. Most people taking it for recreation are taking much higher doses than prescribed. I don't think that a drug dealer is going to be organized enough to do hour long sessions every week for 30 different people and not get noticed.by olyjohn
5/30/2026 at 2:21:22 AM
The ADHD patients aren’t necessarily the ones doing weekly talk therapy. They’re meeting occasionally for a quick chat with a psychiatrist.I agree, if you’re just doing talk therapy it seems overkill. But they may have concerns about emergencies, where a patient is in crisis and you realize you don’t actually know who they are.
And insurance fraud: Alice has health insurance, her friend Betty does not but needs therapy, so she signs up under Alice’s name (“oh, I actually go by Betty.”)
In general, I don’t think it’s that outlandish that the company wants to know definitively who its patients are and be able to demonstrate it does, but hopefully they can come up with more options for verification.
by smelendez
5/29/2026 at 7:15:00 PM
Well, that doesn't scale to be worth the risk, and should be immidiately obvious to any dealer with an iq higher than room temperature.by siva7
5/29/2026 at 3:31:59 PM
Yeah this feels like an over-excited nothingburger from 404. Of course you need to verify who the hell you're going to write an electronic prescription for a controlled substance is actually who they say they are.It's literally just a government ID check/liveliness check. In this case... it's needed.
by kotaKat
5/29/2026 at 3:36:35 PM
Government-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.
by sonofhans
5/29/2026 at 4:27:26 PM
I 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?
by smelendez
5/29/2026 at 6:58:36 PM
Right, it’s a hairball. And all to enable a remote-first, VC-backed business model. Most people would rather see doctors in person.by sonofhans
5/30/2026 at 12:39:55 AM
I definitely know people who prefer online therapy because they have a busy schedule or live far from a therapist who meets their needs (e.g., people in rural areas).Some people also prefer online visits for other care, usually things they can self-diagnose: a recurring sinus infection, erectile dysfunction, hair loss, etc.
by smelendez
5/29/2026 at 4:00:57 PM
[flagged]by kotaKat
5/29/2026 at 4:34:04 PM
> Viagra, Ozempic and ketamine, legal methYou 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.
by Traubenfuchs
5/29/2026 at 6:09:50 PM
and 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"by skeeter2020
5/29/2026 at 6:09:12 PM
I've done telehealth from multiple providers and they've never required a biometric scan. If this is "of course" then why would that be?by wat10000
5/29/2026 at 4:47:52 PM
Every user of Headway is required to submit to this, regardless of medication status, or they lose access to the platform (and their therapist).HN has come a long way if we’re considering it a nothing burger that sending scans of your face to a 3rd party verification company is required to not lose access to your healthcare provider.
by jdgoesmarching
5/29/2026 at 6:24:38 PM
wait - even for interactions with non-prescribers? that's even less defensible!by chrisweekly
5/30/2026 at 6:58:29 AM
[dead]by banannaeugene
5/29/2026 at 6:09:58 PM
HN is filled with the most ridiculous nonsense, hence my username.by wat10000
5/29/2026 at 3:52:28 PM
Some 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.
by mystraline
5/29/2026 at 5:43:26 PM
Meanwhile, 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?"by FireBeyond
5/29/2026 at 6:13:35 PM
Yup, 'cause if the noctor prescribes the script, only then does the noctor gets their paycheck.by kotaKat
5/29/2026 at 3:22:00 PM
insurance compliance?by germinalphrase
5/30/2026 at 7:02:50 AM
[dead]by banannaeugene
5/29/2026 at 4:06:46 PM
Oh 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.
by dccooper
5/29/2026 at 6:48:26 PM
If 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.
by mapt
5/29/2026 at 5:52:27 PM
Surely 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.
by zdragnar
5/29/2026 at 6:13:35 PM
What 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!by skeeter2020
5/30/2026 at 8:02:50 AM
[flagged]by 3vo-ai
5/29/2026 at 5:16:13 PM
Could be insurance or prescription drug related. Need to make sure the person getting care is a real person and who they say they are?by cortesoft
5/29/2026 at 5:50:11 PM
This 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.
by zdragnar
5/29/2026 at 3:21:14 PM
Please drink verification can to continue.by moffkalast
5/29/2026 at 7:26:55 PM
You mean verification suppositories.by pryelluw
5/29/2026 at 9:43:33 PM
I mean, if that's the only way to verify, it ain't the worst way...by stronglikedan
5/29/2026 at 3:16:03 PM
Isn't gov ID + selfie check the standard for a majority of online healthcare in the last few years?by cm2012
5/29/2026 at 6:04:23 PM
What 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.by kovek
5/29/2026 at 3:16:10 PM
Nope.by exabrial