Pioneer Health Care Organizations Share Lessons Learned and Challenges Ahead

The health care industry is working to make paper passé by 2014, which is the deadline for fiber-optic lines to hum with

The health care industry is work

Private equity investment naturally gravitates to industries that are experiencing buoyant demand and pressure to become more efficient. With its steady growth and global pressure to rein in costs, the healthcare sector has all of the symptoms of an attractive PE play. Patient demand is robust worldwide. In emerging economies, broad populations are gaining access to modern healthcare for the first time. And in the advanced economies, governments, health insurers, employers and other private payers are overhauling reimbursement formulas and restructuring healthcare delivery systems.

Think back to December 1982 and imagine a business leader with 25 years of experience. That executive had managed through five recessions. Now fast forward to December 2007 and visualize the next generation business leader. In that person's 25 years of experience, he or she had managed through only two recessions--and those were two of the mildest recessions on record.

It's not every day that investors get to hear the world vision of Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM). However, they had that opportunity at this year's JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, Calif., which featured a record 395 public and private company presentations. A highlight of the conference came when Mr. Dimon was interviewed by CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, and any subject material, particularly troubling U.S. and World issues, was fair game.

Healthcare insurers are using apps to streamline patient-care systems, by connecting with and educating members, and ultimately reining in spiraling costs. The Future of mHealth is our series that explores opportunities and challenges of mHealth, which aims to put widespread access to healthcare within the reach of those who need it most. Several large U.S. ...

Over the course of this week, I'll be asking some health-care experts what they'd like Santa to add to the bill during conference commi

Jon Gruber is a health economist at MIT. But that understates his influence in the field. He was one of the architects of the Massachusetts reforms. In 2005, he was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine.