Dear clients and friends: Given your interest in health and medicine, we would like to share with you our collection of the most interesting perspectives on our industry's trends and developments. We are happy to share them with you — and hope you share your thoughts with us.

1. Pills Over Princesses

Once again, Fortune has released its annual list of Most Admired Companies. For the first time in over a decade, pharma cracks the Top 10, with Pfizer ringing in at number 4 (sorry, Disney!). Might it signal a broader industry bounce-back?:

More than half of the U.S. population now has a positive impression of pharma, while one-third said their perception of the industry had improved since the pandemic began. Pfizer also had the highest positivity rating: 29% said they saw the company as “very positive” and 32% as somewhat positive—a total of 61% on the positive side. Moderna posted similar scores, at 26% for very positive and 35% for somewhat positive, which also totaled 61% positive.

2. Prime Delivery: Now Shipping Nurses

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Amazon is coming for healthcare. But could it be different this time?

In 2022, Amazon will end its glory ride through space to land in the waiting room of primary care. Tech Crunch reports on a program Amazon will launch in 20 US cities:

The Amazon service offers urgent and primary care services, including COVID-19 and flu testing, vaccinations, treatment of illnesses and injuries, preventive care, sexual health and prescription requests and refills. When concerns can’t be resolved virtually, Amazon Care dispatches a nurse practitioner to a patient’s home for additional care, ranging from routine blood draws or listening to a patient’s lungs.

3. Gold for South Korea

Forget South Korea's triumph in speed skating in the Olympics. The Republic stands atop the podium for its response to COVID. In The Atlantic, Uri Friedman makes a case for how the Asian nation kept deaths low and economic activity high. Among data sharing, public trust, and local responses, South Korea also did a good job communicating:

As early as January 30, 2020, when the country had only five confirmed COVID cases, the government initiated twice-daily press briefings with public-health officials. It quickly issued press releases and web resources packed with data on the state of the outbreak and steps to counteract it, deployed a mobile-friendly emergency-alert system, established a 24-hour COVID hotline, and disseminated infographics on measures to avoid infection.

4. Party Like It’s 2019

Like you, we have a secret soft spot in our hearts for the memes that dumped on 2020 and 2021 and looked forward to a bright 2022. Health Affairs does not. The journal predicts five trends that will define US healthcare in 2022 – and it’s a real buzzkill:

As of late 2021, about one-third of all clinical employees had quit their jobs, nearly double the rate from two years ago. This will be exacerbated by 500,0000 nurse retirements expected in 2022.

About 85 percent of all health care purchasing tasks are done manually, using paper checks. Not only does this result in $4–$6 billion in erroneous payment and invoicing errors, but it also wastes nearly $40 billion a year in transaction fees and other inefficiencies.

Although Congress passed a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package that includes provisions to improve the ports, railways, and roads that caused some of the supply chain disruptions of the past year, the problem is frankly much bigger.

5. Can Neurodiversity Improve Care?

“Neurodiversity” is enjoying its reign as a favorite corporate buzzword, especially if we’re talking “neurodiversity at work.” The Guardian pushes past the pablum to see how neurodiversity makes for better healthcare:

[Therapist Steph] Jones believes that having autism turbocharges her as a mental health specialist: autistic people often excel at problem-solving, enabling them to pick up cues that neurotypical therapists might filter out. They’re unlikely to judge people, enabling clients to feel genuinely accepted, and often have intense interests, which can lead to an obsession with research, training and further education.

[Jacqueline, another HCP] also feels her autistic traits have helped in her job as an advanced nurse practitioner in a 24-hour crisis assessment team – especially being open-minded. “I am very good at remaining neutral when doing urgent crisis assessments of highly distressed people and their families, which often involve the police and emergency services,” she says.