Zocdoc CEO: I’ve watched Walmart, IBM, and others try to ‘disrupt’ healthcare. Here’s why they failed

For over three decades, I have dedicated my career to healthcare technology. Having worked on Zocdoc, I have observed the common misconception that healthcare can be disrupted by building a system outside the existing framework, scaling it quickly, and compelling incumbents to adapt. However, healthcare's complexity and entrenched incentives make such an approach ineffective.

While many companies, including big tech and digital health firms, have tried to reinvent healthcare, few have succeeded. Joint ventures like Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase's Haven, Walmart Health, IBM Watson Health, and Babylon Health have all either disbanded, filed for bankruptcy, or sold off their healthcare units at a fraction of their initial investments.

This is because healthcare is not a technology problem; it is a complex systems and incentives issue involving hospitals, physician groups, insurers, pharmacies, electronic health records, regulations, and clinical workflows. Disruption playbooks assume that reinventing one part of the system will cause the rest to conform, but healthcare's interconnected components make this assumption unrealistic.

To solve healthcare's most significant problems at scale, innovation must work with the existing system, not against it. Fewer disruptive attempts, and more pragmatic approaches are needed to drive meaningful change at scale.