40 Different Ways to Reshape Healthcare

Gone is the winter of biopharma, payers, and providers working at arm’s length from health tech. In its place, a new convergence has blossomed, and with it a multidisciplinary attempt at disrupting a $3 trillion industry.

Healthcare’s collision with lower-cost genetic sequencing, mobile tech, artificial intelligence, and consumerization will transform the trajectory of how we live for the next 10 years.

MM&M‘s list of the Top 40 Healthcare Transformers shows the women and men sowing the seeds of these nascent trends so they take root, and nurturing full-fledged metamorphoses.

This power list not only appears online, thanks to a masterfully timed digital reveal whereby the MM&M editorial team posted the Top 40 on 4/4/17 (thank you, Gregorian calendar!). It’s also featured in our May print magazine, to arrive soon in your office mail room to pick up and peruse. And many of its members will speak in person at MM&M Transforming Healthcare, our spring conference taking place on Monday, May 1, in New York.

One of those slated to hold forth will be Melinda Richter, who also graces the May cover. As head of the 5-year-old JLABS wing of J&J Innovation, she drew on her experiences in tech while at Nortel to create an innovation incubator for biopharma that’s equal parts innovation and talent strategy.

Biotech and digital health startups receive infrastructure and resources, and the big biopharma “gets an injection of excitement and creativity,” she tells MM&M. “The biggest thing is that they need each other.”

Read the profile: Melinda Richter, head of JLABS at Johnson & Johnson

Indeed, the promise of symbiotic benefits — and the belief that patients deserve a more consumer-friendly experience with the health system — has attracted other up-and-coming entrepreneurs to not only collaborate with, but also to embed their talents directly into healthcare. Like Richter, fellow Transformer (and conference speaker) Geeta Wilson cut her teeth in tech — at NCR — before joining Humana to form its FastStart Consumer Experience, a company lab whose goal is to evolve the payer’s customer experience.

The 2017 Transformers class — our third — has certainly solidified its place alongside the earlier two, blending their indomitable spirit to disrupt and desire to prove that medicines and related technologies benefit patients with a collective acknowledgment that doing so is not a solo effort. Its companion list is the inaugural Top 10 Innovation Catalysts, featuring the best and brightest from the agency world.

You can see several others in action at MM&M Transforming Healthcare. Sessions will explore what the New World Order will look like, whether it will be enabling or disruptive (likely both), and how it has already transformed business models. (If you miss the event, check out our forthcoming eBook of takeaways.)

Attend the MM&M Transforming Healthcare conference, on Monday, May 1.

Meantime, I encourage you to read the profiles of these luminaries. You’ll discover their secret to cultivating a beyond-the-pill revolution that’s as sustainable as it is disruptive. As Richter notes, the JLABS model of fostering external connections depends on an internal mentality whereby teammates are encouraged to find joy in rallying around one another’s unique strengths. “Being ourselves,” Richter says, “is the only way of having a transformational impact.”

And if you enjoy our Transformers package, there’s more where that came from. Kindly subscribe to any of our email newsletters, or sign up for a print subscription. What you’ll get is some of the best coverage of healthcare’s evolution available today.