Healthcare's transformative leaders are looking to upend the industry by building on the pandemic's scientific advancements
- Insider identified 10 healthcare leaders changing the business of healthcare across the globe.
- They're exploring high- and low-tech pathways toward a more resilient healthcare system.
- Their contributions range from new ways to develop medicine to social interventions in the hospital.
In 2021, the leaders transforming healthcare may have been inspired by the dizzying pace of medical research and development during the pandemic, but many are looking beyond COVID-19 to build a healthcare system that can withstand future health crises.
They're funding and developing new diagnostics for chronic conditions like cancer and heart disease and reimagining health software so providers and insurers can get paid not for individual services but for the quality of the care. Others are taking a lower-tech approach, infusing healthcare with more attention to equity.
The rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine, potential drug therapies, and even virtual care during lockdown has paved the way for these leaders. As McKinsey analysts point out in a recent report, the urgency of a health crisis meant that companies and governments took on unprecedented investment risk, unlocking public and private funding dollars for healthcare research and development.
"The nature of the global humanitarian crisis made it possible to break molds and challenge orthodoxies in a state of force majeure," that report says.
Leapfrogging beyond COVID-19
Across healthcare, leaders are looking to transform the industry, building on the foundation built by the pandemic's accelerated health and science research.
Even the duo responsible for turning the genetic material known as messenger RNA into life-saving medicine - the science behind Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines - are exploring ways to apply the concept to other diseases.
BioNTech's Katalin Karikó and the University of Pennsylvania's Dr. Drew Weissman have been chasing mRNA since the '90s; today more than 95% of all coronavirus shots given in the US are mRNA vaccines. BioNTech is developing mRNA vaccines for HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, and Karikó is also researching using mRNA against cancer. Weissman is examining pan-coronavirus vaccines, among other projects.
The pandemic's overnight transition to virtual care also laid the groundwork for OptumHealth's new telehealth service, Optum Virtual Care, connects to its urgent care centers and 1,600 clinics.
"The challenge that was given to me was not only to figure out what to do right now during a pandemic," Optum's Kristi Henderson told Insider. "But what do we want this to look like in the future?"
Walmart, which bought telehealth company MeMD in June 2021, is also looking to change up when and how healthcare is delivered - including by selling Medicare insurance plans to seniors and by using technology to help people manage their medications. Dr. Cheryl Pegus, executive vice president of Walmart Health & Wellness and a cardiologist, is leading that charge.
Upending healthcare also means re-envisioning why and how providers and insurers get paid. That means rewarding good quality care instead of the volume of services doctors provide, Aledade's Dr. Farzad Mostashari told Insider.
Transforming the human elements of healthcare
Some of these leaders are focused on improving the human elements of healthcare, including acknowledging the patient's social and economic circumstances.
Dr. Sophie Lanzkron, who heads up the Sickle Cell Center for Adults at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, has made it her mission to help hospitals across the country build their own sickle cell infusion centers, instead of forcing patients to rely on emergency room triage. Sickle cell patients, often Black, often also experience racism in medical settings, Lanzkron said.
In Philadelphia, Temple University's surgeon-in-chief Dr. Amy Goldberg and trauma outreach coordinator Scott Charles are leading the charge to bring social services, including mental healthcare workers or employment advisors, directly into the hospital to work with victims of gun violence and other trauma.
"It's really seeing the patient not for a single, isolated gunshot wound that you're going to care for in that single point in time, but how can you truly make an impact on that person longitudinally, and the community in which your hospital sits?" Goldberg told Insider.