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Aytan Dahukey is a partner in the Corporate Practice Group in the firm’s Century City Office.

At HLTH 2023, we saw a focus on certain themes, including the shift in investments and M&A activity, hospital and health system innovation and transformation, the implementation of AI, and healthcare management. Below are our top 10 takeaways from what we heard, and did not hear, at HLTH 2023.Continue Reading Sheppard Mullin’s Top 10 Takeaways from HLTH 2023

The digital health market, as represented by the HLTH showroom floor, is packed with companies focused on care coordination and care management for various health and wellness specialties, diseases, and chronic conditions, as well as organizations focused on increasing consumer access to various types of healthcare. Despite the growth of data analytics and interoperability, the constellation of companies and points of access are decentralized and disconnected. While the abundance of choice and options enhancing accessibility for healthcare consumers are positive indicators of progress in this space, the lack of holistic care coordination across this fragmented landscape affects patient outcomes, causes patient confusion and decision fatigue, and leads to potential care and resource duplication and waste.Continue Reading At HLTH 2023: The Digital Health Symphony, A Care Coordination Orchestra with No Maestro

At the heart of our healthcare system lies two core, yet competing, philosophies: (1) clinical decisions must not be driven by profit, and (2) dollars drive behavior and, by harnessing this revenue, clinical outcomes can be vastly improved while the costs to the system of unnecessary care can be dramatically reduced. Here at HLTH, venture capital firm General Catalyst announced it is seeking to change that paradigm with the launch of its Health Assurance Transformation Corporation (HATCo), seeking to transform healthcare with global risk arrangements while leveraging data and technology. Continue Reading At HLTH 2023: General Catalyst’s HATCo Introduces a Radically Ambitious and Transformative Model for Healthcare

Thursday, January 13 was the last day of the virtual J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference for 2022. And since the conference was virtual, what better topic to start us off today than a consideration of the new Virtual-First trend that surfaced in 2021. We’ll follow that with a dive onto the couch to consider the conference’s mental health offerings and where the behavioral health sector is heading.
Continue Reading Day Four Notes for the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2022

Have you been working out recently? We hope so, for today, Day Three of the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, was definitely a day for heavy lifting.  Got a challenge that seems overwhelming? A problem that’s big enough to totally scare other folks? Do you eat triathlons for lunch? Well, then you’re going to like the Day Three companies. Let’s talk about fixing the huge American diabetes problem, providing better healthcare for Medicaid and dual eligible beneficiaries, and helping people beat cancer.  All that, plus a COVID-19 thought exercise…
Continue Reading Day Three Notes for the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2022

The phrase “whole person health” kept echoing through the virtual hallways during the second day of the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Looking at the whole person – not just separate organs or body systems – may seem obvious and commonsense, but it’s not how our (well planned, highly logical) healthcare system currently is structured.
Continue Reading Day Two Notes for the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2022

For those of you who know me, I like to have fun with my Zoom backgrounds – choosing photos of interesting scenery or changing them mid-call to reflect my mood or negotiating strategy. Sitting in front of my computer this year for the first day of the 2022 J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference (the 40th annual!), I was lamenting the bland, boring backgrounds of the presenters who were using low-quality stock shots or empty office views until I realized that I was looking at the wrong thing. I really had to look at the shadows and not the backgrounds. There are a LOT of shadows over this year’s J.P. Morgan Conference – COVID-19, the jittery stock market, the future of Medicare Advantage and recent industry changes.
Continue Reading Day One Notes for the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2022

With the uptick in the pace of vaccinations and lifting of restrictions in many states over the past few weeks, a clearer picture of the road ahead is coming into focus.  In a timely discussion, Los Angeles’ Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) hosted healthcare industry leaders to share lessons learned over the past year, what’s here to stay, and what’s on the horizon.  ACG dubbed the panel “Coming up for Air: Healthcare Investing and Growth in 2021 and Beyond,” which featured leaders from various healthcare sectors, including Shane Armstrong, President and General Counsel at American Vision Partners (AVP); John DiGiovanni, Investment Partner at Arsenal Capital; and Rob Mahan, CEO at Exer Urgent Care.  The panel was moderated by Aytan Dahukey, Partner and Private Equity Team Leader at Sheppard Mullin and Adam Abramowitz, Managing Director at Intrepid Investment Bankers.
Continue Reading ACG Panel Paints a Bright Future for Healthcare Investment and Growth

We’ve been talking about telehealth and mental health this week. Here’s both combined in one interesting and highly valued announcement today, followed by several tests – well, 3 million COVID tests a week to be exact, and, speaking of Exact Sciences, developments in the early detection tests for the other major disease that is most feared, cancer.
Continue Reading Day 3 Notes for the 39th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2021

It’s Day 2 of the J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference at its finest – looking closely at healthcare inequities, strategic business shifts and killer robots, all in the same day! (Yes, we did say killer robots and it’s your reward for reading all the way to the end of this article).
Continue Reading Day 2 Notes for the 39th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2021

Sitting in the dark before 6 am in my Los Angeles house with my face lit up by yet another Zoom screen, wearing a stylish combination of sweatpants, dress shirt and last year’s JPM conference badge dangling around my neck for old times’ sake, I wonder at the fact that it’s J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference week again and we are where we are. Quite a year for all of us – the pandemic, the healthcare system’s response to the public health emergency, the ongoing fight for racial justice, the elections, the storming of the Capital – and the subject of healthcare winds its way through all of it – public health, our healthcare system’s stability, strengths and weaknesses, the highly noticeable healthcare inequities, the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and vaccines, healthcare politics and what the new administration will bring as healthcare initiatives.
Continue Reading Day 1 Notes for the 39th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, 2021