What JPM Signals for Healthcare in 2026

AI, GLP-1s, federal policy, and China. Those themes dominated last week’s JP Morgan Health Care Conference in San Francisco. But what, if anything are the implications for the broader healthcare world in 2026?

Hosts David Williams, President of Health Business Group, and John Driscoll, Chairman of UConn Health discuss what stood out most at JPM, including why the GLP-1 wave may be entering a new phase, how Big Tech and AI are reshaping the healthcare landscape, and why China’s growing presence in biotech is becoming harder to ignore.

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Transcript

David: 0:00

Ai, GLP one's, federal policy, and China. Those themes dominated last week's JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. But what, if anything, are the implications for the broader healthcare world in 2026? Welcome to Talk, America's Home for Incisive Debate about healthcare, business, and policy. I'm David Williams, president of Health Business Group.

John: 0:27

And I'm John Driscoll, the chairman of Yukon Health. And David, it was a lovely week in San Francisco, warm and sunny, which it rarely is. And is it, is it a warm and sunny time for the healthcare industry? We shared quick takes last week. Now we're gonna go to the deep grooves. What are the big themes for healthcare in 2026? Based on our quick insights,

David: 0:52

John, one of the things that I, from JP Morgan. One of the things, John, that I saw on the sidelines of JP Morgan is somebody mentioned, Hey, it's sunny in San Francisco. That means healthcare stocks are gonna go up in the first half of the year. I don't, I don't know if there's really that effect. Uh, or not, not a buyer, John. There was a generally positive, um, attitude out there and there's, there's a couple items that, uh, were, uh, featured this year and last year and maybe now this year at a little more mature level. So one is certainly about AI and the impact from that. And the other one is, uh, GLP one. So there's, I think, sun. On both of those, but, uh, a little bit, a little bit more substance. Well,

John: 1:26

I, I, I think that, well, the, you know, there are, uh, I, the four things that I think were themes worth. Digging into the, the GLP one craze feels like it's just getting started, whether it's in farm up healthcare services, health plans, or individuals. You've got AI talk everywhere. I, I think, Dave, we should also talk a little bit about China. There's sort of the, the specter of China taking the lead in healthcare innovation. Um, and then I, I do think it was generally. An optimistic moment. I mean, obviously there was a cloud last year post the assassination of the, uh, United Health, uh, CEO, but I, I think people are generally pretty positive. Maybe let's maybe go in order, Dave, what, what, what, uh, what did you have the same impression on GLP ones being still sort of a, a ma a a monster wave?

David: 2:24

Yeah. So what's interesting about GLP ones, John, is that you've got both the expansion into other indications beyond obesity, but then also the question of sort of the sustainability and is this something that people are gonna take for a long time? So you've got, um, the products that are having a, a, a good impact on. Weight loss in particular, it's measurable. They're also finding if people go off the drugs, it means that their weight comes back. So in in pharma world, it's actually kind of good.

John: 2:52

Oh, Dave, you are. So what, such a cynical view. So these are the, these are the, the products are the GLP ones. Are those products that are the As appetite suppressants that historically, uh, that have been probably one of the fa they're they're growing their, their, their popularities is, is, is as great as chat. GPT. It's one of the, the fastest growing consumer products that I've seen in pharma because there's the. There's the, the direct use of those, a appetite suppressants for folks who've got chronic metabolic disease who are having struggling with their weight control and diabetes. And now we're seeing for those same appetite suppressants, the fact that it appears to be anti addictive and also may have a pretty big impact on cardiac, cardiac health. And so when you add that cool cardio and metabolic category, it's a pretty monster. Um, uh, uh, those are, those are monstrously large categories of what drives chronic illness in the us. The other thing that's sort of interesting, Dave, is that initially two thirds of the people who started on these drugs, which were injectables with either an auto, auto pen, or uh, or a, you know, a conventional syringe, we're not taking it. So they, they were not staying on those drugs and so they would drop off. What was interesting, uh, right before we got into JP Morgan is the, the introduction of orals where people can start taking pills as opposed to, you know, having a syringe. And, and I think that could actually affect whether people stay on these drugs and the amount of interest on the part of pharma, because these are so popular and appear to affect. Or potentially promise to impact and reduce chronic illness across a number of different categories. It seems like every, nearly every large pharma company is interested in finding new ways to create these kinds of drugs or, or those like them. And that's got, you know, put a spring in the step of the, the, the, the, the pharma innovators, not because of the cynical reason you suggested Dave, but because it, they appear to be pretty attractive ways to solve. Some of our, to maybe break the back of this, of this, of this obesity epidemic.

David: 5:13

Well, John, I don't think you're exaggerating. Um, and you're going a little bit with the, with the breadth of the different indications and what it could do for chronic illness in general. I think also the depth is worth exploring and so there's been diet pill craze before, like with Fen. Now some of those issues are side effects, but also they just don't work as well. So the GLP ones actually have a really profound impact on, uh, you know, on weight. And you saw a couple, there were a couple indicators of it recently that I would, that I would point to one. There was actually an analyst report that was talking about, you know, the airlines are gonna be spending less on fuel. Because they think the passengers are lighter. That strikes me as would be surprising. But that, but that's got a lot of attention. And then there was, um, you know, if you look at what's the impact on a population level, you could see sort of state by state obesity levels over time. That gets reported. Now the data are, are lagging the government data. But, uh, Gallup did a recent poll, thousands of people. And they asked about their height and their weight, and they calculated the BMI. And what they're showing is that actually that obesity is declining for the first time after increasing sort of for, as you know, as far back as the eye can see.

John: 6:22

Well, and, and I, and I, I'm not a necessarily a believer that people are going to admit whether they're putting on a few extra pounds or not, but you're, you're hearing about it in analyst reports and quarterly earnings of fast food manufacturers of, of. Of, uh, of effectively the, the, the, the, the, the fast food restaurants, the places where folks have historically gotten high caloric, not necessarily the healthiest foods. Um, those food manufacturers, distributors, and restaurants are, are talking about. A decline and it's, it's certainly having an impact in the restaurant industry and it also appears to have an impact or maybe tied to the reduction in the use of alcohol, which also could be all, all of this, Dave, for all of the healthcare noise, this is a very good public health outcome. If in fact, these drugs, uh, and the, and the, and the change in behavior can be continued, I mean, isn't, isn't this good news for the American public health system?

David: 7:26

Well, I don't really care about that, John, but you've mentioned some other, some other areas that where there's an impact. So certainly there may be some businesses like alcohol and fast food that are maybe negatively. Affected, but I think you were pointing to also kind of the ecosystem, which is, if it's important for someone to stay on the product, it, it is not enough just to, to have it, even frankly, if it's in pill form. And so what I'm excited about is seeing some of these companies that are arising to say, make sure, let's actually get the benefit out of it. So keeping people on the product for longer, making sure that when they lose. Weight and per, you know, including muscle, perhaps some, sometimes, often a lot of muscle that they actually get into a strength training program. That the diet is going in the right direction. And so I think there's a lot of interesting healthcare services businesses around it. So it's not just the fact that all the pharma are interested in it, but what about all the other, uh, surrounding businesses? So the

John: 8:16

companion businesses that would help. People get the best, most outta these drugs. I, I, I'm surprised at how big this is, this has become, and how large an interest pharma has in this. But you're absolutely right. There are gonna be a lot of companion businesses, um, that are tied to this. Keeping people on the drugs and making sure that people are actually stay healthy because there is, there, there are, there are some. Profound examples of muscle wasting when you lose too much weight too quickly, or you have a hard time eating enough protein to kinda stay on top of things. So Dave, what, what would be, other than the GLP ones and pharma having a spring in their step, what else is, what else did you, other big themes, did you Yeah. Observe out of JP Morgan?

David: 8:57

So, so we touched on AI quite a bit, uh, last week. So maybe let's just keep it a little bit focused. Um, and one is that you've got these announcements about the, from the LLMs. Uh, the large language model is about actually having something that's healthcare specific and presumably gonna be HIPAA compliant. And I wonder whether these announcements actually make, uh, a big difference or not. These are also ones where like obesity, actually, everybody's using the LLMs for medical advice. Now is this gonna be the dawn of a new era that you've got, you know, healthcare and Chachi pt and, and, and Claude.

John: 9:30

Well, I think, I think what's interesting is that these hyperscalers with, with the ability to put an infinite amount of money to work, were all over. The healthcare conference last week, um, the people couldn't get a meeting with, uh, open AI's chat GPTs team, um, Nvidia, the chip manufacturer, that that creates the chips that power these. Large language models 'cause they require massive amounts of compute. Had was, was having meetings all around the conference. Microsoft was having meetings all around the conference. And a lot of these earlier stage companies like a Bridge or Hippocratic or Infinitus, where I'm, um, and on the board were all, you know, chock full of meanings because I, I think that for the first time. Uh, that I've seen certainly David, in 25 years at JP Morgan, which is sort of the healthcare conference, you're seeing a real convergence of large tech manufacturers, manufacture chip manufacturers, software manufacturers, as well as these large language models, trying to find ways, appropriate ways to work with healthcare companies, empower them to towards innovation. Insight and cost reduction. I mean, it's a very, if that was probably the theme that we didn't talk about yesterday is the range of tech company engagement. Um, the reach of it was really quite profound last week.

David: 11:00

John, I would, I have to agree with you on that and say that, you know, what you also saw is the health plans actually stepping away. You don't really see health plans. You see that actually explicitly stepping away and in some cases health systems as well. So yeah, I think tech is big there. I also saw that, I don't know if it was the value, it was the valuation of one of the firms, maybe open ai that was like. Bigger than all of the pharmaceutical industry combined. Combined, which, which means that if you think about AI being. Really important for the future of the pharmaceutical industry. What does it mean about the traditional company's ability, uh, to actually compete there, uh, if the resources are going, are going elsewhere? So,

John: 11:40

yeah. Yeah. I don't think, I don't think you have to, the valuations themselves, you know, can, can rocket it up and rocket down. We've seen every new wave of technology, whether it's the.com world. Um, the railroads, you, you remember, you know when the railroads started to I remember John. I remember,

David: 11:58

yeah. In fact, didn't we do a special episode, uh, when they had the, the wedding of the rails out in Orum, Utah? I seem to recall that

John: 12:05

the was in Ogden. Yeah. And, and, and, and the and the, and the, and and you. There's, there's always overinvestment over excitement. You know, people forget, you probably remember Dave, that in the early dawn of the auto industry there were like 50 or 60 different auto manufacturers, and only three or four really. Survived. And so there's always this overemphasis on the new there's, you know, but I'm reminded of da, of Bill Gates's comment that, you know, people overestimate technology's impact in the short term, but underestimated in the long term. But this convergence of the large enterprises looking for ways to really crack some of the, the hardest. In healthcare, I think, I think, I think was, was, was, it was, was, was pretty interesting. Uh, but I would go back to the notion that I, I don't think we're gonna see the big impact on AI in healthcare, uh, in anything other than administrative services. But that's pretty large. With about, you know, of our $5 trillion healthcare business industry, about a trillion of it's considered an excess o you know, overhead, uh, that that's a pretty big target. If you were able to apply AI and large compute to kind of solve some of those administrative hassles, I mean, Dave, where do you think the biggest impact in short, in the short term AI is going to have in healthcare?

David: 13:26

I think the biggest impact is actually on. Enabling the consumer to actually participate more directly. So in the early days of the internet, uh, doctors would complain that a patient brings me this big, you know, printout of all this stuff, and I have to spend the whole appointment telling 'em it's nonsense. And now I would say. Well, the physician sees that too, but also the patient can really do it and get a distilled view if they, if they know how to, if they know what they're, if they're doing. That's what I see kind of the impact on the clinical side. Certainly there's a big administrative impact as well. John, I wanna reserve some time to talk about topic that you raised that going into JPMI would not have guessed was going to be a, a major feature, but coming out of it kind of makes sense that it was, and that's China and that actually brings together. A few different things. Uh, one of them is certainly talking about, uh, innovation and, you know, the US has been really the capital of, uh, drug development, especially for biotech drugs, and particularly Boston, San Francisco, San Diego. That's, that's where it's all been happening. But there's a heck of a lot of, uh, drugs coming out of China now. Um, a lot of products being, uh, developed kind of in the early stage. And the reason I say that brings together some themes is that you've got on the one hand. The partnership that we've had since the end of World War ii between the federal government and the major research in, uh, universities in the US has been under strain, is one way to look at it. You've also got many Chinese under attack.

John: 14:50

Dave, you're, you're getting too diplomatic. You protecting the, the, uh, the, the administration, the, the administration is definitely, you know, com been in a little bit of a, a, you know. Lawyerly combat with some of the great research institutions in the United States.

David: 15:08

So we've got that. Then we've got the, uh, FDA, which has become, uh, let's say less predictable, at least maybe they're going in a reformist direction. Hard to know exactly. Uh, we had the, the current, uh, commissioner of the FDA, uh, Marty Macari was on our show last year, or actually 2024 I guess at this point. Um, we called it early. You've got, you've got the FDA, then you've got immigration. So we've had a lot of Chinese students that have come to the US and have, have stayed here, uh, but now a lot are, are returning. Um, and then you've got the question about just, uh, you know, global competition between China, um, and the us. So I see this has actually been a big theme that's been, uh, that's been discussed and I think appropriately.

John: 15:49

Well, I think David, what what you hear, what you heard at the JP Morgan conference is a real fear that China is going to accelerate. Ahead of the US there, the Chinese universities have already started to try to recruit, um, Chinese American and other professors and researchers to their research institutions. Kind of No, no questions asked. I mean, no. Sort of like, just come over and, and we'll pay, um, the, there is a, an aggressive. Uh, agenda on the part of, uh, prime Minister Xi to create a breakthrough leading biotechnology industry, um, which at least partially is informed by the notion that they see, um, leadership in biotechnology as a national security agenda item for, uh, the people's Republic. And, and hence a lot of capital is going towards that. But honestly, there's a fair amount of skepticism that in an authoritarian regime you can create the same kind of results. As you can in the West with the same kind of scientific rigor. I mean, Dave, you heard some of the criticisms on that. What, what, what, what's your perspective on the promise of Chinese biotechnology?

David: 17:08

I'll give you two sides of it. One side is actually I am, I'm, I, I quite think that the Chinese could do very well in biotech for a couple reasons. One, just the number of people and the fact a lot of 'em are trained in the same universities where, uh, you've got the breakthrough people who are, who are developing things in the US and to some extent in Europe and a lot of 'em are, are back there. Um, and, and the other thing I'll point to is maybe an analog is if you look at, um, electric vehicles. So Tesla has huge market share in the US but you know, Elon Musk basically admitted, you know, if you let Chinese vehicles come in, uh, to the us which they're currently, you know, prohibitive tariffs that prevent them from doing so, you know, they would take over. And if you look at the capabilities in China, uh, what they've got in low cost and high performance electric vehicles there, it just blows away anything that we, that we've got here. So that makes me think that, well, biotech might follow a similar path. You know, they talk about the cost of. Of, uh, developing a drug is a billion dollars or something like that. Why does that, why is that? Well, maybe it's because no low cost, uh, approach has been done. Now, what you're hinting at, John, what you're referring to is, I did hear from some people that are actually, uh, involved in this, is that as they look at the data packages that are coming from some of these earlier stage, uh, biotechs in China, the quality of the data is not high. They see that someone maybe has unlicensed something, but then when they actually dig into it, they're gonna find out that there's no there, there. So those are, those are two sides of it. I would actually say there's no reason to be complacent about it. Um, and I've given an anecdotal example, uh, with this data package. And a more systemic example of the autos, and I think it's probably more like autos.

John: 18:45

No, I, I, I think that's right, David. And certainly I think if we, we care about America's competitive leadership. Um, the example you gave, I mean, Tesla in the us, BYD, China, um, uh, Tesla can't compete in Europe. Um, on, on, on the basis of cost, value, feature set, and quality of the car, um, in a, in an open market. Um, and that's, that's happening and that that's why BYD, like the lead, the lead Chinese auto manufacturer is likely to be the leading, um, ev um, car manufacturer in the world. I mean, they've already started to, to, to, to poke ahead of Tesla based on the, on the global numbers, and that would've been unheard of. Three or four years ago. Um, I, I think the same thing, um, is the same shock, uh, for Americans happened when the deep seek model, the LLM model that China dropped, um, after the US dropped its open AI models with chat, GPT and um, philanthropics, Claude and Google's Gemini. Although it's interesting right now, Chinese AI authorities are starting to worry about whether they'll, they, they have the capacity to catch up to America. They're very focused on competitiveness. There. We need to, I think, be very focused on competitiveness in biotechnology and, and healthcare innovation because, um, now the, the Chinese are coming to compete, compete aggressively.

David: 20:17

Let, let's take that, uh, automakers, um, biology com, bio biologics comparison one step further. So, with the Chinese, uh, automakers, there is actually a legitimate concern about, you know, real national security concern about letting, uh, Chinese, uh, automakers have cars all over American streets. Because they've got all these sensors, cameras, and so on, like that's an actual threat. Mm-hmm. With biotech, it's not like that. There's not really an argument that says, well, you know, if it cures cancer there, we still shouldn't have it.'cause it's, it's a threat actually. You'll see if those products are successful in the clinic. In China that they will, they will come to the rest of the world. I don't think you're gonna have trade barriers that actually stop that. And I think that the, uh, the global, uh, companies, mostly American based in pharma will in-license those products. And that you, you actually will see that happen and you will see that industry thrive, uh, at the expense of the rest of the world.

John: 21:15

Well, the, the, the, but don't underestimate the impact of, uh, the national security threat, Dave. I mean there's definitely, um, based on open sources, a lot of suggestions that there's a thriving bio warfare infrastructure in. China offensive and defensive. That's clearly happened. That's clearly happening in the, in the Soviet Union. Um, it's one of Putin's priorities, and so they're prepared in the same offensive, the sa, the same investment you need to make to defend against bio warfare. You know, you know, viruses that are meant to, to impair or kill, um, or, or to protect against those, the same thing, the offensive and the defensive technology is similar. Um, there's a lot of interest and, and certainly a lot of gossip about, um, enhanced enhancing, you know, leveraging biotechnology, um, to. To, to create enhanced human capabilities and for warfare. Um, there's a lot going on, um, behind, uh, the walls of government secrecy that would suggest that, uh, that, that, uh, um, the, the China's gonna put a lot of resources here that will also have, I think. Profoundly good therapeutic uses, but we need to, and perhaps one of the good news about, um, commissioner Macy's attempts to reform and accelerate, uh, a drug approval development and research, which he has committed to, um, will put us in a better position to compete because it would be catastrophic, I think, if we were to lose our leadership position in this category, which is just not, not just saved a bunch of people, uh, millions of people. In, in our generation, cancer's now a manageable condition, um, but is also a pretty critical part of our industry.

David: 23:04

So, John, let me, let me end on another negative note since I'm known for that apparently. Um, let's take a look at, you know, sometime back in the, I think it was in the eighties, around then, uh, the Labor Party in the UK proposed a unilateral nuclear disarmament. Which is a fringe idea and was kinda laughed out. Now we actually have gone ahead and done unilateral disarmament by. Uh, banning the funding of RNA, uh, mRNA research, uh, here in the us. And so let's just point that out and put that in a, in a different context than perhaps it's been, uh, described, uh, before. Because if you're worried about bio warfare, uh, and you decide that you're gonna kill the, you know, the best technology that we have for, uh, defending against it, I think that's probably a bad idea.

John: 23:52

I, I, I, I couldn't agree with you more.

David: 23:55

Great. Well, on that note, uh, we really did enjoy that, uh, uh, JP Morgan Healthcare conference, and I think we've gotten more positive or negative as we've, uh, as we've come, uh, back eastward, and I'll say that's it for yet another episode of Care Talk. I'm David Williams, president of Health Business Group,

John: 24:12

and I'm John Driscoll, the chairman of the Yukon Health System. If you liked what you heard or you didn't, we'd love you to subscribe on your favorite service.