Publications

3 Jun 2023
Talk

Health Care Innovation Opportunities Created by COVID-19 and How to Make Them Happen

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

The crush of patients created by COVID enabled the creation of sites for care outside the traditional hospital, such as retail pharmacies, ambulatory surgery centers, urgent care centers, telemedicine, and wireless sensors. Public policy mirrored these changes by... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Health Industry; Health Industry

June 2023
Article

The Effect of Firms' Information Exposure on Safeguarding Employee Health: Evidence from COVID-19

By: Lisa Yao Liu and Shirley Lu

We show that information exposure through international business networks enables firms to take proactive measures that benefit employees and potentially the local community. Specifically, in the early days of COVID-19, firms that have business networks with China and... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Networks; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Health Pandemics; Decision Choices and Conditions; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

May–June 2023
Article

Unmasking Behaviors During the Pandemic with Video Analytics

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kaiquan Xu and Kannan Srinivasan

In 2020, as the novel coronavirus spread globally, face masks were recommended in public settings to protect against and slow down viral transmission. People complied to varying extents, and their reactions may have been driven by a variety of psychological factors.... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Social Influence; Social Norms; Health Pandemics; Behavior

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April 24, 2023
Article

In the COVID Era, Why Corporate Benefits Demand CEO/CFO Leadership

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

The expectation that employers provide their employees’ health benefits has been around since World War II. Unfortunately, although today’s employees expect employers to treat them as individuals, ease their experiences, prioritize their wellbeing, and control cost,... View Details

Keywords: COVID; COVID-19 Pandemic; CEO; Leadership; Health Insurance; Benefits; CFO; Compensation and Benefits

April 5, 2023
Article

We Need an Operation Warp Speed for Long COVID

By: Esther K. Choo and Scott Duke Kominers

With millions of people affected and at least $1 trillion of economic value at stake, long COVID is our next national health emergency. View Details

Keywords: COVID; COVID-19; COVID-19 Pandemic; Scientific Research; Policy; Health Policy; Innovation; Science; Public Finance; Public Health; Health Disorders; Health Care and Treatment; Human Capital

March 2023
Case

Moderna

By: Marco Iansiti, Karim R. Lakhani, Hannah Mayer, Kerry Herman, Allison J. Wigen and Dave Habeeb

This multimedia case follows the story of Moderna and its entry into vaccine development in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In summer 2020, Stephane Bancel, CEO of biotech firm Moderna, faces several challenges as his company races to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Research and Development; Digital Transformation; Health Testing and Trials; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

2023
Article

Comparison of COVID-19 Hospitalization Costs across Care Pathways: A Patient-level Time-driven Activity-based Costing Analysis in a Brazilian Hospital

By: Ricardo Bertoglio Cardoso, Miriam Allein Zago Marcolino, Milena Soriano Marcolino, Camila Felix Fortis, Leila Beltrami Moreira, Ana Paula Coutinho, Nadine Oliveira Clausell, Junaid Nabi, Robert S. Kaplan, Ana Paula Beck da Silva Etges and Carisi Anne Polanczyk

The COVID-19 pandemic raised awareness of the need to better understand where and how patient-level costs are incurred in health care organizations. This study used time-driven activity-based costing to estimate COVID-19 patient-level hospital costs in a Brazilian... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Cost; Health Industry; Brazil

February 2023
Article

Maintaining Health Care Innovations After the Pandemic

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Barak D. Richman and Kevin A. Schulman

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the worst failings of the health care system, but it also stimulated a flurry of innovations that could lead to a much-improved delivery system. These were innovations that were born out of necessity: telemedicine access and use... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Industry; Health Care Outcomes; Innovation; Innovation In Healthcare Delivery; COVID; COVID-19 Pandemic; Pandemics; Telemedicine; Telehealth; Ambulatory Care; Vaccines; Innovation and Invention; Change; Health Industry

February 2024
Article

An Economic Framework for Vaccine Prioritization

By: Mohammad Akbarpour, Eric Budish, Piotr Dworczak and Scott Duke Kominers

We propose an economic framework for determining the optimal allocation of a scarce supply of vaccines that become gradually available during a public health crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Agents differ in observable and unobservable characteristics, and the... View Details

Keywords: Vaccine; Fairness; Public Finance; Public Goods; Allocation Problems; Allocative Efficiency; Allocation Rules; Social Welfare; Pandemics; Inequality; COVID-19; COVID-19 Pandemic; Public Sector; Resource Allocation; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Public Administration Industry

SSRN

January–February 2023
Article

Forecasting COVID-19 and Analyzing the Effect of Government Interventions

By: Michael Lingzhi Li, Hamza Tazi Bouardi, Omar Skali Lami, Thomas Trikalinos, Nikolaos Trichakis and Dimitris Bertsimas

We developed DELPHI, a novel epidemiological model for predicting detected cases and deaths in the prevaccination era of the COVID-19 pandemic. The model allows for underdetection of infections and effects of government interventions. We have applied DELPHI across more... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Epidemics; Analytics and Data Science; Health Pandemics; AI and Machine Learning; Forecasting and Prediction

January 2023
Case

Natura: Weathering the Pandemic at Brazil's Cosmetic Giant

By: Brian Trelstad, Pedro Levindo and Carla Larangeira

Brazil's Natura, a multi-brand cosmetics group, has taken several measures to safeguard the livelihoods of its thousands of employees and millions of sales representatives during the COVID-19 health and economic crisis. The company has also made strides in its efforts... View Details

January 2023
Supplement

Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (B)

By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh and Christian Godwin

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, Apple and Google partnered to develop a contact tracing application that would collect information about users infected with the disease and notify those who they had been in contact with. While Apple/Google’s... View Details

Winter 2022
Article

Distributing a Billion Vaccines: COVAX Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities

By: Eric Budish, Hannah Kettler, Scott Duke Kominers, Erik Osland, Canice Prendergast and Andrew A. Torkelson

By January 2022, the COVAX international vaccine collaboration had allocated over a billion vaccines to over 140 countries. We describe and review the allocation process chosen, which reflected both an objective of equitably distributing vaccines across the world and... View Details

Keywords: Vaccines; Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Distribution; Supply Chain; Equality and Inequality

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2022
Article

Investigating the Association Between Telemedicine Use and Timely Follow-Up Care After Acute Cardiovascular Hospital Encounters

By: Mitchell Tang, A Jay Holmgren, Erin E. McElrath, Ankeet S. Bhatt, Anubodh S. Varshney, Simin Gharib Lee, Muthiah Vaduganathan, Dale S. Adler and Robert S. Huckman

Background: Telemedicine use increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, questions remain as to how telemedicine use impacts care.
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the association of increased telemedicine use on rates of... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Telemedicine; Health Care and Treatment; Outcome or Result; Behavior; Health Industry; United States

Winter 2022
Article

Vaccines and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons from Failure and Success

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alex Tabarrok

The losses from the global COVID-19 pandemic have been staggering—trillions in economic costs, on top of significant losses of life, health, and well-being. The world made significant and successful investments in vaccines to mitigate the pandemic, yet there were... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Vaccination; Market Design; Health Pandemics; Loss; Outcome or Result; Opportunities; Crisis Management

2022
Article

How Does Working from Home during COVID-19 Affect What Managers Do? Evidence from Time-Use Studies

By: Thomaz Teodorovicz, Raffaella Sadun, Andrew L. Kun and Orit Shaer

We assess how the sudden and widespread shift to working from home during the pandemic impacted how managers allocate time throughout their working day. We analyze the results from an online time-use survey with data on 1,192 knowledge workers (out of which 973 are... View Details

Keywords: Time-use; Working-from-home; COVID; Managers; Knowledge Workers; Health Pandemics; Time Management

November 1, 2022
Article

To Prepare for Future Surges, U.S. Hospitals Must Start Planning—& Sharing Resources—Now!

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

Keywords: COVID-19; Crisis Management; Health Pandemics; Disruption; Planning; Health Industry; United States

October 2022
Case

Afrigen Biologics: Vaccines for the Global South

By: Debora L. Spar and Julia Comeau

The majority of vaccines used on the continent of Africa (99%) are produced offshore. This makes African nations reliant on the West for major health care needs, a problem which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Afrigen Biologics (in partnership with the WHO)... View Details

Keywords: Vaccination; Vaccine; mRNA; COVID; COVID-19; Inequity; Hub-and-spoke; Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Production; Social Issues; Business and Government Relations; South Africa; Africa