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Fifteen+ years of
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Several hundred perspectives on the questions facing payers, providers, biopharma, medtech, and digital health — plus our running read on the clinical literature. Start with our sharpest work, or filter to your world.

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Keys to harnessing the value of digital biomarkers in clinical trials

  • Biopharma , 
  • Medtech , 
  • Digital , 
Digital biomarkers are no longer just a pipe dream—they are here, and their use is potentially at an inflection point. However, successful implementation requires more than enthusiasm; it demands thoughtful strategies tailored to each clinical innovation, therapeutic area, and digital tool.

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Can doulas help with our maternal health crisis? Promises and obstacles to impact

  • Digital , 
This post, by a high school senior who spent the summer with Recon Str…

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A Kaplan-Meier view of oncology development

  • Biopharma , 
  • Digital , 
We refresh a prior analysis of two cohorts of oncology development pro…

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Amazon becomes a shopping facilitator for healthcare services (finally…)

Back in 2018, I offered a speculation about what Amazon might do in he…

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What’s so special about One Medical in the eyes of Amazon? A few quick thoughts

  • Providers , 
  • Digital , 
There isn’t a bricks-and-mortar primary care acquisition out there tha…

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The Puzzling Future of Healthcare

  • Biopharma , 
  • Providers , 
  • Digital , 
This post is from a talk at the 2021 Link Ventures CEO summit. Origin…

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Walmart Health: Will the fifth attempt at clinics be the charm?

  • Providers , 
Eighteen months ago, WMT opened its first Walmart Health clinic attach…

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AI in healthcare III: COVID-19 applications and implications

  • Biopharma , 
  • Payers , 
  • Providers , 
  • Medtech , 
  • Digital , 
COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of AI in healthcare. AI based to…

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Strategy in the Time of Covid

  • Biopharma , 
  • Payers , 
  • Providers , 
  • Medtech , 
  • Digital , 
Preamble A recent post from Recon Strategy outlined the longer-term st…

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Amazon to startups: stay close to the consumer and let us own the platforms

  • Digital , 
Amazon’s healthcare play appears to be heavily focused on platforms ra…

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There’s always a bigger fish: healthcare services giants are looking anxiously over their shoulders

  • Payers , 
  • Providers , 
  • Digital , 
With the closing of the CVS/AET and CI/ESRX combinations, healthcare s…

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Consider this speculative scenario on WMT-HUM: nibbling at the bottom and taking a slice off the top of the healthcare delivery pyramid

  • Payers , 
  • Providers , 
WMT is in talks with HUM about a relationship enhancement, possibly an…

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Google’s health insurance apprenticeship: some unicorns (maybe) but no masterpieces

  • Payers , 
  • Digital , 
Last month, word got out that Verily is in talks with health plans to …

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Amazon offering health insurance: a potential mistake

35%+ of consumers who purchased on Amazon over a 30-day period say the…

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Consider this speculative Amazon scenario in your strategic planning

  • Payers , 
  • Providers , 
Amazon has many puzzled about its plans for healthcare. Arguably, Amaz…

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Urgent care gets drawn into system-level market share battles in the Big Apple

  • Providers , 
Warburg Pincus, the new majority owners of CityMD, a 68 site urgent ca…

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Rapid cycling to get medications right: a potential use case for coupling wireless patient monitoring with remote support?

  • Providers , 
  • Digital , 
Summary Cheap home devices are starting to generate a flood of high f…

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Attacking an oligopoly by integrating downstream services: Can Livongo’s closed loop get traction vs. the big glucometer incumbents?

  • Medtech , 
  • Digital , 
Summary Livongo is marrying a cellular-enabled glucometer and a data …

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When is a patient not a patient? More often than you think

  • Medtech , 
  • Digital , 
I have been conducting an informal test for the past year and a half. …

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Context is King – When to use an Agile corporate strategy?

  • Biopharma , 
  • Payers , 
  • Providers , 
  • Digital , 
“Agile corporate strategy” (as defined in a previous post) is already …

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Sustainable Agility – Activity Systems for the Agile Competitor

  • Digital , 
The dirty little secret of the booming agile training and coaching ind…

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Enterprise Agility as Corporate Strategy

  • Digital , 
In a previous post, I explored Maxwell Health as an example of agile p…

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The Walgreens-Advocate deal: end of urgent care’s strategic neutrality in Chicago?

  • Providers , 
This past January, Walgreens assigned operational control of 56 in-sto…

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Emails substituting for visits: Evidence points to “yes” but providers need to answer a lot of emails to replace a single visit

  • Providers , 
  • Digital , 
Earlier this month, researchers released a study of patient-initiated …

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Maxwell Health and Agile Healthcare Strategy

  • Digital , 
Maxwell Health LLC is a rapidly growing company that offers a platform…

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Can convenience care be a platform for an insurance product?

  • Payers , 
  • Providers , 
Summary A Portland-based urgent care operator is launching a health p…

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Boiling the Ocean…or not

  • Payers , 
  • Providers , 
  • Digital , 
We've all heard the term, "Boiling the Ocean" to refer to an approach …

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