In this video clip from a Motley Fool Live interview, recorded on April 11, Fool.com contributor Rachel Warren and KPMG Partner Kristin Pothier discuss how connected healthcare ecosystems and organizational readiness can help when there is a supply chain breakdown.
10 stocks we like better than Walmart
When our award-winning analyst team has an investing tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*
They just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Walmart wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.
Stock Advisor returns as of 2/14/21
Rachel Warren: Another one of the topics you talk about a lot is this idea of connected healthcare ecosystems. I wonder if you could tell our audience what is meant by that concept? What is the ideal connected healthcare ecosystem? Why is this important to the future of healthcare for investors who are looking at the space?
Kristin Pothier: Sure. We are pharmaceutical companies, diagnostics companies, device companies, health systems, all creating products and paradigms every day to help our patients live longer lives. But if that patient doesn't understand where to go, doesn't understand how to take a medicine, isn't qualified for a medicine, or honestly can't afford the medicine, it doesn't get to the patient.
Therefore, there is an entire ecosystem around that patient that really serves to better serve, and at the end of the day, the physicians, the payers, the pharmaceutical companies, the diagnostics companies, the health systems, all have to work in concert with each other. This has been a major issue in the COVID epidemic as well because supply chains have been disrupted.
Even in best of intentions, sometimes our therapies aren't getting to our patients because the supply chain isn't able to get there. Our diagnostics aren't getting there because of an issue with supply chain. When each part of that ecosystem breaks down, we have an unfortunate situation with the patient at the end of the line.
When we talk about connected ecosystems, we talk about them in terms of fortified connected ecosystems that if there is a break in the system, what's the fallback? We spend a lot of time with our companies saying what is plan B, what is plan C, what is plan D? In order to really make sure that this connectivity stays connected and even if one part of the chain breaks down, another part can make up for it.
I think an area that is really important here that we are working with our companies on right now is organizational readiness for this, because even again best of intentions, you have scientists creating the best drugs in the world but if it can't get to a certain country in a certain area, it falls flat with regards to a global launch.
