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There are many reasons companies engage in M&A activity. Achieving revenue or cost synergies usually tops the list. But more and more we are seeing companies use M&A to transform their business all together. In the case of Aetna’s $37 billion acquisition of Humana, the financial reasons are obvious. The combination creates a company with revenues of $115 billion and over $3.0 billion of cash flow; with a goal of generating $1.2 billion of synergies by 2018. Together the companies will create the second largest managed care company by revenue and bringing together Humana’s growing Medicare Advantage business with Aetna’s…

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We have written extensively about the confluence of advanced technologies and their impact on our healthcare system. Perhaps it is now appropriate to go a step further and think about which high-impact innovations could go beyond our realm of normal expectations and create true Black Swans in our industry. Let’s use a recent article we read about pattern recognition as an example. This article connects the dots between the invention of printing press (a Black Swan for sure) and the discovery of semiconductors, and it goes like this: In 1450, when printing press was invented and people started to read…

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