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• Case | HBS Case Collection | June 2020 (Revised July 2020)

  TraceTogether

  Mitchell B. Weiss and Sarah Mehta

  By April 7, 2020, over 1.4 million people worldwide had contracted the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Governments raced to curb the spread of COVID-19 by scaling up testing, quarantining those infected, and tracing their possible contacts. It had taken Singapore’s Government Technology Agency (GovTech) and Ministry of Health (MOH) all of eight weeks to develop the world’s first nationwide deployment of a Bluetooth-based contact tracing system, TraceTogether, and deploy it in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19. From late January to mid-March 2020, GovTech’s Jason Bay and his team raced to create a technology that would supplement the work of Singapore’s human contact tracers. Days after its launch, Singapore’s foreign minister announced plans to open source the technology. Now, in early April, TraceTogether was a beta for the world. Whether the system would really help in Singapore, and whether other countries should adopt it was still a wide-open question

  Keywords: Government Administration; Crisis Management; Health; Health Pandemics; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Social Issues; Technology; Mobile Technology; Software; Technology Adoption; Health Industry; Public Administration Industry; Singapore;

  Citation:

  Weiss, Mitchell B., and Sarah Mehta. "TraceTogether." Harvard Business School Case 820-111, June 2020. (Revised July 2020.)  View Details

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• Article | Harvard Business Review (website)

  How to Make Remote Monitoring Tech Part of Everyday Health Care

  Samantha F. Sanders, Ariel Dora Stern and William J. Gordon

  Remote patient monitoring is a subset of telehealth that involves the collection, transmission, evaluation, and communication of patient health data from electronic devices. These devices include wearable sensors, implanted equipment, and handheld instruments. During the pandemic, such monitoring programs have proven valuable. But special measures and conditions made that possible. By encouraging regulators to make permanent the temporary measures introduced during the pandemic and by following six guidelines to integrate these programs into health care, providers realize their tremendous promise.

  Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Technology; Data and Data Sets; Technology Adoption;

  Citation:

  Sanders, Samantha F., Ariel Dora Stern, and William J. Gordon. "How to Make Remote Monitoring Tech Part of Everyday Health Care." Harvard Business Review (website) (July 2, 2020).  View Details

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• Article | Health Affairs | July 2020

  Lessons From The Impact Of Price Regulation On The Pricing Of Anticancer Drugs In Germany

  Victoria D. Lauenroth, Aaron S. Kesselheim, Ameet Sarpatwari and Ariel Dora Stern

  Worldwide spending on prescription drugs has increased dramatically in recent years. Although this increase has been particularly pronounced in the US, it remains largely unaddressed there. In Europe, however, different approaches to regulating drug prices have been implemented. Under the 2011 German Pharmaceutical Market Restructuring Act (Arzneimittelmarktneuordnungsgesetz, or AMNOG), for example, manufacturers freely set the prices of newly authorized drugs during their first year on the market. Benefit assessments are carried out during this year and then used in price negotiations between manufacturers and representatives of the country’s statutory health insurers. Using data on fifty-seven anticancer drugs launched in Germany from 2002 to 2017, we found that implementation of AMNOG was associated with drug prices being more closely aligned with clinical benefit. Introducing price negotiations led to a 24.5 percent decrease in negotiated prices relative to launch prices. We did not find evidence that manufacturers responded by setting higher launch prices. AMNOG is an example of how government price negotiation can be designed to better align prices with clinical benefit without delaying patient access.

  Keywords: Pharmaceuticals; prescription drug costs; drug pricing; Access to care; cost reduction; Health Care and Treatment; Price; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Cost Management; Germany;

  Citation:

  Lauenroth, Victoria D., Aaron S. Kesselheim, Ameet Sarpatwari, and Ariel Dora Stern. "Lessons From The Impact Of Price Regulation On The Pricing Of Anticancer Drugs In Germany." Health Affairs 39, no. 7 (July 2020): 1185–1193.  View Details

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