Two leading Silicon Valley venture capital funds were incubating a seed stage telemedicine company that proposed to leverage nurse practitioners as an alternative for certain primary care conditions. The investors sought out Health Business Group to assist in understanding the market landscape and segmenting prospective customers.

A health information technology company had achieved strong market penetration with hospitals, health systems and individual healthcare professionals. However, advances in technology and computer networks, consolidation of the provider market, and the company’s lack of a comprehensive pricing strategy had created challenges.

The client began as a contract sales organization serving large pharmaceutical companies. Market dynamics had been deteriorating as the pharmaceutical industry as a whole began to reduce the size of its sales force and as large customers started negotiating more aggressively.

A biomedical research institute within a large clinical organization had encountered difficulties in developing and communicating a strategic plan. An initial plan had been developed internally, but key members of the parent organization’s board and senior management were skeptical of the value of research and were concerned about the costs of the institute and of the proposed strategy.

The company had developed a robust business managing advanced wound care services in the hospital setting and was seeking to accelerate its growth by opening freestanding hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) centers for wound care and other indications.

Health Business Group has provided technical assistance in sustainable business model development and strategic planning under the auspices of a major philanthropic foundation. Since 2009 we have worked with grantee organizations in California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin.

A leading pharmacy benefit management (PBM) company had achieved a robust growth trajectory via organic growth and acquisitions. Health Business Group was asked to evaluate the attractiveness of other medical benefits markets including oncology, radiology, orthopedics, and medical devices and to develop an entry strategy for the more promising ones.

A large private equity firm asked Health Business Group to assist in the commercial due diligence of a core information technology provider for health plans.The target was a leading player with smaller health plans and was aggressively trying to gain ground with larger customers but encountering entrenched competitors.

A client with cutting-edge technology for point-of-care clinical decision support for providers was pursuing opportunities to expand into the adjacent payer and pharmaceutical markets.Expansion into new markets meant a whole new set of direct and indirect competitors.

A leading provider of physician clinical decision support tools asked Health Business Group to assist in developing a business case for a platform for professional mobile medical apps. The mobile app market had undergone rapid growth and transformation over the past several years and all indications were that this space would continue to be highly dynamic.

A leading integrated practice management and electronic health records company asked Health Business Group to research best practices and benchmarks for lead generation fees paid to channel partners for referring new business. The client’s compensation structure and levels needed to be refreshed due to the company’s evolving product portfolio and changes in market conditions.

The Forum for Collaborative HIV Research is an independent public-private partnership, which facilitates and enhances HIV research by framing difficult issues and helping to establish research strategies. Its members include governmental agencies such as NIH and FDA, private industry including big pharma and biotech, academic researchers from leading institutions, providers, foundations and the advocacy community.

A statewide electronic healthcare collaborative was nearing the end of its pilot funding from a large payer. The collaborative needed support in developing a broader funding plan in order to achieve its full statewide objectives. The collaborative brought together the state’s main healthcare stakeholders to overcome the barriers to electronic health record (EHR) adoption.

A major retail pharmacy chain asked Health Business Group to undertake a review of its medication information offerings. The client had assigned ownership for the project to the online group, but we encouraged the company to view the opportunity more broadly than simply a website content strategy.

Health Business Group has assisted many clients in developing their growth strategies, often tapping into new products and services in existing customer segments and assisting clients in expanding into new customer segments.

A leading hospitalist company was seeking additional growth and evaluating long-term strategic alternatives to maintain a differentiated offering in the marketplace.The overall hospitalist market is large and growing, due to increasing acceptance from community physicians, demand from hospitals for new programs and expansion of existing programs, and a growing realization that insourced solutions have drawbacks.

Advanced Practice Strategies (APS) is a medical risk management company, which partners with leading professional liability carriers such as the Harvard Risk Management Foundation/CRICO to develop demonstrative evidence for use at malpractice trials and to provide online continuing medical education (CME) to healthcare providers to improve patient safety and risk management.

A leading medical technology company asked Health Business Group to evaluate whether the company should expand its presence in the market for remote patient monitoring (RPM) for chronic illness. RPM is a promising technology that has the potential to address fundamental issues in healthcare, especially the rising demand for chronic care coupled with caregiver shortages and financial constraints.

Passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has created attractive opportunities for private equity firms to invest in companies that serve newly insured segments of the population and contain costs. But investing in the sector requires insight into the details of how health reform is rolling out and how different players in the market are likely to react to new incentives, rules and opportunities.