Regina Herzlinger has been named the "Godmother of consumer-driven health care," because of her groundbreaking scholarly articles and books on this subject. She differed from conventional views of health care consumers, who were derogatorily described as non–compliant or patients. Instead, she portrayed them as busy people who are eager and capable of participating in managing their health, with appropriate, relevant, and respectful support.

Prof. Herzlinger named the consumer-driven health care movement.  Her focus has supported the explosion of remote medical centers, wearables, implantable sensors, telehealth, urgent and emergent free-standing care facilities, and the intense interest in health savings and health reimbursement accounts. She anticipates future consumer-driven health plans and delivery systems focused on specific chronic diseases and disabilities.

She is also a teacher and scholar of innovation in health care. She highlights changes in insurance, focused health care delivery and insurance, medical technology, and transparency. Regi has taught thousands of Harvard students that only innovators can serve the ever-changing needs of health care consumers and how to make innovation happen through her popular HBS courses and HarvardX MOOC, Innovating in Health Care. Many of her students founded billion-dollar innovations and prominent non-profit firms and became leaders in major health corporations. Her forthcoming book Innovating in Healthcare (Wiley, 2020), contains the lessons of her courses.

She has been active in U.S. health care public policy. For example, her Wall Street Journal editorial "The IRS Can Save American Health Care," influenced an Executive Order: Promoting Healthcare Choice and Competition across the United States, finalized June 2019, and a Wall Street Journal editorial in October 2018 by three U.S. cabinet secretaries that cited her, "New Health Options for Small-Business Employees." Her 2020 Health Affairs article couples Biden/Trump proposals to create a bipartisan, cost–controlling solution to increasing coverage without raising taxes.

Prof. Herzlinger is also a successful medical technology entrepreneur with her husband, a Ph.D. Physicist. Their devices, which they design and manufacture in the U.S., have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. They are working on new ideas and have formed a charity to promulgate education in healthcare innovation.

Regina E. Herzlinger is the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. She was the first woman to be tenured and chaired at Harvard Business School and serve on many established and start-up corporate health care/medical technology boards. She initiated the courses in non-profit and health care at HBS and was the first faculty member to be selected by the students as their best instructor. Her books include Best Sellers: Who Killed Health Care; Consumer-Driven Health Care; Market-Driven Health Care, and the anticipated December 2020 release Innovating in Healthcare: Creating Breakthrough Services, Products, and Business Models (Wiley).