Health Care
Health Care
Over the past several decades, HBS has built a foundation in health care research, from Clayton Christensen's application of disruptive innovations and Regina Herzlinger's concept of consumer-driven health care to Michael Porter's use of competitive strategy principles. Today our research focuses on
- how management principles and best practices from other industries can be applied;
- how the process of innovation can be improved;
- how principles of strategy and consumer choice can be utilized;
- how information technology can expand access, decrease costs, and improve quality;
- how new approaches in developing nations can impact global health.
Initiatives & Projects
The Health Care Initiative and the Social Enterprise Initiative connect students, alumni, faculty, and practitioners to ideas, resources, and opportunities for collaboration that yield innovative models for health care practice.
Health CareSocial EnterpriseRecent Publications
The Rise of Remote Work: Evidence on Productivity and Preferences from Firm and Worker Surveys
By: Alexander Bartik, Zoë Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca and Christopher Stanton
- Fall 2025 |
- Article |
- Journal of Economics & Management Strategy
Drawing on surveys of small business owners and employees, we present three main findings about the evolution of remote work after the onset of COVID-19. First, uptake of remote work was abrupt and widespread in jobs suitable for telework according to the task-based measure from Dingel and Neiman (2020). The initial adoption lead to a persistent shift in work arrangements that both firms and workers forecast would continue into the future. Second, business leaders’ perceptions of how remote work affected productivity shifted over time. In early 2020, 70 percent of small business owners reported a productivity dip due to remote work. By contrast, the median business owner reported a positive productivity impact of remote work by 2021. Third, 21 percent of workers report being willing to accept a pay cut in excess of 10 percent if it allowed them to continue working from home, but the median worker in a teleworkable job would not tradeoff any compensation for the option of continued remote work. Taken together, our evidence points to perceived productivity gains and some workers’ preferences as reasons for the persistence of remote work in the years following the onset of COVID-19.
Valeant: Pharma’s Enron? (B)
By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese and David Allen
- August 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
This supplement details the fallout from Valeant’s decline after 2016, noting federal convictions and SEC findings.
Valeant: Pharma’s Enron? (A)
By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese and David Allen
- August 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
This case examines the rapid rise and even faster fall of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International. Led by former McKinsey partner J. Michael Pearson from 2008 to 2016, Valeant abandoned the traditionally research-intensive strategy of most pharmaceutical companies and instead concentrated on generating shareholder returns through serial acquisitions. Although Valeant quickly became a Wall Street favorite, aspects of its accounting practices came under increasing scrutiny, including the ways in which it accounted for its acquisitions, its use of non-GAAP metrics that hugely improved its profitability compared to GAAP, and its revenue recognition and disclosure policies relating to Philidor, a specialty pharmacy that it relied on to increase sales of drugs whose prices it had raised sharply. Exploring each of these aspects of Valeant’s accounts, the case also poses a broader question: should the market really have seen Valeant's bold strategy as a warning?
Emory Healthcare on the Front Lines of the Nursing Workforce Crisis (B)
By: Susanna Gallani, Karen L. Sedatole, Sarah Mehta and Nicole Zelazko
- August 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
This supplement to the Emory Healthcare (A) case details organizational developments from July 2023 through October 2024. It explores leadership transitions, expanded recruitment efforts, compensation strategy shifts, and technology investments aimed at addressing persistent nursing workforce challenges.
Revenue Collapses and the Consumption of Small Business Owners in the COVID-19 Pandemic
By: Olivia S. Kim, Jonathan A. Parker and Antoinette Schoar
- August 2025 |
- Article |
- Journal of Financial Economics
Using financial account data linking small businesses to their owner households, we examine how business owners’ consumption responded to changes in business revenues during the COVID-19 crisis. In the first two months following the National Emergency, business revenues declined by 40 percent, largely driven by national factors rather than local infection rates or policies. However, the pass-through of revenue losses to owner consumption was limited: each dollar of revenue loss resulted in only a 1.6-cent decline in consumption. This muted pass-through persisted through 2021, even after the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines. Our findings suggest that federal subsidies and pandemic-induced reductions in spending opportunities explain the limited impact.
Rejuvenate Bio: Turning Back the Biological Clock
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Shweta Bagai and William Marks
- July 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
The case traces the journey of Daniel Oliver and Noah Davidsohn, founders of Rejuvenate Bio, a biotech company developing gene therapies for age-related diseases. Inspired by Davidsohn's dog Bear and building on research from George Church’s lab at Harvard, the company aimed at extending healthy human lifespan by 20–40 years. By transforming the liver into a 'biofactory' for beneficial proteins, their approach targeted the root cause of multiple chronic diseases: aging itself. Rejuvenate Bio took the non-traditional path of pursuing parallel development in both human and animal health markets. With positive clinical data in canine heart disease, established commercial partnerships, and human trials approaching, the founders must decide whether to maintain their integrated dual-market strategy or split into separate companies. Their choice will determine both their business trajectory and how quickly aging technologies reach patients.
A New Framework for Reducing Healthcare Disparities
By: Susanna Gallani, Mary Lynch Witkowski, Lidia M. V. R. Moura and Katie Sonnefeldt
- July 3, 2025 |
- Article |
- Harvard Business Review Digital Articles
Despite decades of initiatives to address healthcare inequities in the U.S., disparities across race, gender, geography, and income remain stubbornly persistent. This article introduces the Strategic Fingerprint Framework for Health Equity, a practical, principle-based tool designed to help healthcare organizations tailor equity initiatives to the specific needs of their communities and capabilities. Developed through in-depth study of Boston Medical Center’s Health Equity Accelerator, the framework emphasizes four foundational principles—hyper-locality, community co-creation, condition-specificity, and internal consistency—and two operational pillars: data-driven decision-making and prioritization. Using BMC’s experience as an illustrative case, the article outlines six strategic choices healthcare leaders must make to translate intention into impact. Early results from BMC include eliminating racial disparities in urgent cesarean section response times and cutting diabetes-related inequities in half—demonstrating the framework’s promise as a guide to targeted, measurable, and sustainable equity improvement.
The Future in Sight: LumineticsCore and the First Autonomous AI for Diagnostics
By: Michael Lingzhi Li and Tinglong Dai
- July 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
After two decades of research, Dr. Michael Abramoff successfully launched LumineticsCore—the first autonomous AI system authorized by the FDA to diagnose diabetic retinopathy without physician oversight. The case traces his journey across algorithm design, clinical validation, regulatory navigation, and the challenges of real-world adoption. It explores the interplay between technological innovation and healthcare institutions, highlighting the need to establish evaluation metrics grounded in clinical outcomes rather than physician consensus. As adoption lags despite regulatory approval, Abramoff faces decisions about which operational, reimbursement, and trust-building barriers to prioritize—decisions that may shape not only LumineticsCore’s future but also the broader path of AI in medicine.
Dell Med: Transforming Care Delivery & Payment
By: Robert S. Kaplan, David N. Bernstein and Mary L. Witkowski
- May 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Health care in the U.S. and globally continues to undergo massive transformation, surging towards a system that rewards value for patients. However, widespread adoption of value-based health care remains a challenge. This case study focuses on the care delivery transformation undertaken within an academic medical center, with a specific focus on novel payment structures (e.g., bundle payments), integrated practice units (IPUs), and outcomes measurement. Insight into time-driven activity-based costing, or TDABC, and the use of innovative digital health solutions are also touched upon. Leadership challenges and strategic dilemmas are highlighted.
Wilburn Medical USA
By: David Ager, Lynda M. Applegate and James Barnett
- May 2025 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
In September 2024, Emily Wilburn Andrews, CEO of Wilburn Medical USA, is five years into her tenure leading the medical equipment supply company since taking over for her father, the company’s founder. She considers approaches to grow the company while maintaining the company purpose—to provide value to customers and improve their quality of life.