Eucalyptus co-founder and CEO Tim Doyle says the telehealth company is balancing commercial imperatives against clinical outcomes. But critics have concerns, including about the potential impacts for patients’ continuity of care.
Ozempic was originally developed as a diabetes treatment. It and other similar drugs contain semaglutide, which mimics the role of a naturally occurring hormone called GLP-1 and helps the pancreas produce insulin, which is how it helps to manage type 2 diabetes. It also induces satiety and this feeling of being full suppresses patients’ appetites, which can lead to weight loss. This is what has captured the public’s attention — and Eucalyptus CEO Tim Doyle’s imagination.
After completing a commerce degree, Doyle worked in hospitality marketing, data management and at the online mattress retailer Koala.com before co-founding Eucalyptus in 2019.
“When I was at Koala, there was a revolution happening in consumer technology, where you had all these businesses taking complex, offline patient or customer journeys and simplifying them, using technology,” he says. “Having been through a few fragmented journeys in healthcare myself, I saw an opportunity to build some technology that made that a little bit simpler.”
Originally, the company had brands in men’s health, skincare and fertility, but moved into weight loss in 2021, when Ozempic hit the news. Consumers have a telehealth consultation over the phone with a doctor employed by Eucalyptus, who prescribes the weight-loss drugs if the patient meets clinical guidelines. Treatments start at $449 a month. Until early 2024, its customers were receiving Ozempic.
In August that year, Eucalyptus switched most of its patients to Wegovy, also manufactured by Novo Nordisk, but specifically targeted for weight loss, which Doyle says allows it to be prescribed in higher doses for greater weight loss.
In 2022–23, the company took in $109m in revenue, approximately break-even, and is growing at 50 to 100 per cent a year, the most recent figures the company could share. Weight loss makes up the bulk of that revenue, with 25,000 to 30,000 weight-loss patients in Australia, adds Doyle.
Eucalyptus also operates in the UK and Germany, markets the company chose because they both have a similar health system to Australia.
The company has raised $150m from investors, including $60m for a $450m company valuation in late 2021 and another $50m at a $560m valuation in April 2023. While investors, including Australian venture capital firms Blackbird and AirTree, and US firm BOND, are happy to support the company, parts of the medical establishment believe the model is detrimental to healthcare.
Counterpoint
“This isn’t healthcare, this is profit care,” believes Dr Nicole Higgins GAICD, former president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) until November 2024. “It’s no different to having a vending machine that people walk up to in a supermarket.”
The RACGP was initially concerned that the demand for Ozempic from weight-loss patients would make it difficult for diabetics to obtain because of a global shortage — and that it was being compounded by pharmacists for weight loss in unhygienic conditions. While that is no longer an issue, Higgins believes the Eucalyptus business model risks undermining the health system and provides access only to those who have the money to pay. “The challenge is that companies are being set up outside our regulatory system for single-issue products and they’re driving a market,” she says. “When we’re talking about people’s health, it’s really important our system is designed to ensure continuity of care.”
Higgins notes people live longer and happier lives with continuity of care. “The discussions people will have with their GP, dietitian or healthcare provider will be very different from what happens if you dial a health-specific tele-company,” she says.
Doyle rejects these criticisms, saying both patient outcomes and the commercial outcomes of the business are aligned because customers will quit their subscriptions if they don’t achieve their weight-loss goals. “We need for it to be a viable business for them to stay with us for a long time and achieve with us across multiple stages of a weight-loss journey,” he says.
The telehealth doctors Eucalyptus employs make clinical decisions independent of considerations about company profits, in the same way doctors at in-person medical consultations do, says Doyle. Most are paid as contractors for each consultation. The company also offers a one-month money-back guarantee for all its services.
When asked if he sees a possible conflict for doctors in working for a company like Eucalyptus, which aims to profit from selling a specific product, Doyle says the doctors have to stay within the guidelines established by their governing bodies. “As long as they achieve within those outcomes, then the outcome is fine for the business commercially, the right thing for the patient from a safety perspective, and the right thing for the practitioner, because they’re getting paid by the consult,” he says.
Clinical governance
The business also has a clinical advisory board, which includes the Eucalyptus clinical director alongside external health professionals, including the former Australian Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth.
Doyle says that in the consultations for the company’s weight-loss brands, around 60 per cent of patients are found to be suitable to take the drugs, 30 per cent are better suited to non-medical options and 10 per cent need to be referred to an in-clinic consultation because of the complexity of treatment — for example, if there is a complicating factor like diabetes.
He rejects any allegations of reduction in continuity of care, noting Eucalyptus patients can access dietitians, nutritionists, health coaches and physiotherapists on the platforms. It’s a fully private service with no Medicare rebate. Patients pay for the doctor consultation, which is bundled into their membership along with the medication, dieticians, coaches and so on. Patients can also elect to have a letter outlining their treatment sent to their GP, although Doyle says Australians often don’t have a single GP they can easily consult.
Christina Fa, a principal at US VC firm and Eucalyptus investor NewView Capital, sits on the Eucalyptus board. She says governance of the company is about ensuring it does the right thing by its stakeholders, be they patients, employees, shareholders, healthcare providers or regulators.
“What is slightly different at a healthcare company is your patients, your customers, are important stakeholders, who are probably elevated in terms of importance relative to any other tech company or software business,” she says, noting the board has a clinical governance committee to ensure the telehealth services it provides are safe and effective. This is delivered via five clinical governance pillars. The first is an organisational structure that facilitates accountability by having clear roles and responsibilities for staff, defined escalation pathways, oversight committees and clinical leadership.
The second pillar is the use of research data to provide insights. The third pillar is risk management, overseen by the board’s risk and audit committee.
“It’s about identifying, assessing and managing risks at multiple levels, everything from individual incidents and individual user complaints to overarching standards and protocols,” says Fa. “Helping you to understand the strengths, capabilities and limitations of providing care through digital health technologies.”
Performance is the fourth pillar, constantly working to identify, monitor and improve the safety and quality of the model of care, starting with training doctors in the use of the Eucalyptus platform to ensure consistency.
The final pillar is having the right technology and user experience, plus data and privacy settings.
After its patients, Eucalyptus’ most important stakeholders are its healthcare providers and regulators. “The way Eucalyptus has interacted with regulators historically has probably been a bit more reactive,” says Fa. “As the company matures, it’s becoming more proactive in sharing data around the clinical outcomes.”
The biggest governance challenge is having the right conversation with regulators, she says, pointing to the UK, where Juniper, Eucalyptus’ weight-loss brand for women, is provisionally endorsed by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, and recommended for use within the National Health Service. Fa says the company already has good relations with Australian regulators, but “that’s probably where we need to spend a bit more time in having deeper-level partnerships, like the UK”.
Doyle hopes Eucalyptus will be 20 times bigger with a million patients by 2030. “High-touch, low-cost care delivered through technology will be the way this is done over the next decade. We’re best set up to be the leader in that space.”
This article first appeared under the headline ‘Emerging Directors’ in the March 2025 issue of Company Director magazine.
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