3 connected strategy in the health insurance industry Introduction While much attention has been paid to how health care providers use new technologies and services like wearables, personalized medicine, cloud infrastructure, telemedicine, and virtual care, the role of the health insurers in achieving better outcomes and reduced costs through connected strategies deserves a deep dive as well. On one hand, digital health start-ups have built businesses with a connected strategy in mind, aiming to be- come trusted partners to end-consumers by creating a unifying experience across care episodes and providers, and by facilitating and orchestrating to a much greater extent the relationships between patients and healthcare providers. On the other hand, traditional health insurers mainly deal with providers and businesses who are the end-payers and have episodic interactions with their end-consumers at best. The world of healthcare is moving towards more value-based approaches due to medical expenditure growing out of control. As a result, traditional insurers need to, and have started to, build more connected strategies and provide services related to their members’ deeper underlying needs, rather than just perform payment reimbursement. While some traditional insur- ance companies such as Aetna and Cigna provide examples of companies that are mak- ing significant progress towards that goal, traditional insurers face challenges related to organization, culture, and decision-making that natively digital start-up companies such as Oscar Health do not. For more information on the general framework underlying this analysis, the reader may refer to Connected Strategy (Siggelkow & Terwiesch, 2019, HBR Press) and related ma- terial available on connected-strategy.com.  1. How Health Insurers Become Connected Companies H Health insurance companies traditionally focused on B2B since as many as 49% of people in the US are covered through employer-sponsored health insurance. From the point of view of members, insurance companies seem to play purely a reimbursement role.1 However, there are many ways health insurers can become more connected with their members. 1 https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/resources/small-business/how-many-americans-get-health-insurance-from-their- employer