11 connected strategy in the health insurance industry counseling for customers and physician engagement. While such a tool is a promising start for Cigna in the realm of connected strategies, it suffers from a relatively low en- gagement, as only 3.9 million of its members use it.27 It may be too targeted, as opposed to broadly-appealing preventative care initiatives. It also may not go deeply enough in customer’s hierarchy of needs or gather enough data from customers, especially when compared to some of the approaches Oscar Health uses and Aetna is developing. To further boost its connected capabilities and catch up to innovators in the field like Oscar Health, Cigna relied on a series of acquisitions and strategic investments through its Cigna Ventures corporate venture capital arm, including28: Buoy Health: a digital health start-up leveraging AI to facilitate accurate, real-time, and personalized care recommendations based on patient symptoms RecoveryOne: a digital health company serving patients with musculoskeletal condi- tions (i.e. impacting bones, joints, muscles, or nerves) by connecting them to tailored evidence-based care programs Arcadia: a population health management company using sophisticated data analytics techniques to facilitated the transition from fee-to-service to value-based care Contessa Health: a leading provider of hospital-at-home services MDLIVE: a virtual care start-up focused on offering urgent and behavioral virtual care visits to customers While integration of these acquisitions and customer adoption may be an issue, these M&A activities and strategic investments represent a promising opportunnity for Cigna to deepen its connected strategies beyond its Connected Care program. Company Background Cigna started in 1982 as a merger between Connecticut General Corporation and INA Corporation and has grown to the fourth largest healthcare insurer in US by number of covered lives.29 Indeed, in 2018 Cigna had 15.9 million members, through a mix of primarily commercial insurances, but also government and individual plans.30 27 https://s27.q4cdn.com/742843823/files/doc_financial/annual/2019/cigna-2019-annual-report.pdf 28 https://hitconsultant.net/2020/01/13/cigna-ventures-arcadia-funding/#.YD7gsV1Kgb0 29 https://www.cigna.com/about-us/company-profile/milestones 30 https://www.statista.com/statistics/828436/largest-health-insurance-companies-in-us-by-membership/