December 2020
Other Article
HBS Alumni Bulletin

Digital Health Care: Empowering Consumers: Q&A with Professor Regina Herzlinger

Format:Electronic

Abstract

Regina Herzlinger, the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration, has been studying the health care sector for nearly half a century. In that time, she has seen significant innovation in the field—and she has also seen the powerful sway of the status quo, which has led to the slow adoption of some cost-reducing, consumer-facing, and life-saving technology innovations. Herzlinger—dubbed the “godmother of consumer-driven health care”—has helped to shepherd countless new health care products to market. But she’s never seen the health care landscape change at the pace that has occurred in 2020. “COVID-19 is a dreadful pandemic,” she says in the following discussion, “but it has turned everything upside down in the health care sector in some good ways.”