Health-E Law Podcast Ep. 20
J.P. Morgan Healthcare 2026 and Beyond: How Digital Innovation Shapes Healthcare M&A
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Listen to the podcast released February 9, 2026, here:
Welcome to Health-e Law, Sheppard’s podcast exploring the fascinating health tech topics and trends of the day. In this episode, partner and host Michael Orlando welcomes Amanda Zablocki, co-leader of Sheppard’s Healthcare industry team, to explore key insights from the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference and discuss how digital innovation is transforming the healthcare M&A landscape
About Amanda Zablocki
Amanda Zablocki is a partner in the Corporate practice group in Sheppard’s New York office and co-leader of the firm’s Healthcare Industry team. A trusted legal and strategic advisor to healthcare organizations nationwide, she helps them to achieve their mission and goals while navigating a dynamic regulatory landscape.
Large-scale, strategic transactions—mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and strategic partnerships, and corporate reorganizations—are at the center of Amanda’s practice. With extensive industry knowledge, a deep understanding of the key drivers and levers for success, and broad experience navigating the complex healthcare regulatory landscape, she helps clients close high-impact deals that transform healthcare.
Amanda’s clients include health plans and health insurers, hospital systems, academic medical centers, digital health and healthcare technology companies, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, rare disease organizations, physician practices, management services organizations, value-based care organizations, and 501(c)(3) organizations. Having begun her career in commercial litigation, she brings a litigator’s eye to managing risk in connection with disputes and advocating her clients’ positions.
Amanda co-founded Sheppard’s Women in Healthcare Leadership Collaborative, an exclusive initiative that provides support to women professionals in the healthcare and life sciences industries. She is also co-founder and a board member of Hyper IgM Foundation, an organization committed to improving the treatment, quality of life and long-term outlook for children and adults living with Hyper IgM.
About Michael Orlando
Michael Orlando is a partner in Sheppard’s San Diego (Del Mar) office. He is team leader of the firm’s Technology Transactions team, a member of the Life Sciences, Healthcare and Artificial Intelligence teams, and co-leader of the firm’s Digital Health team. Michael has more than 20 years of experience advising health technology companies, insurers, healthcare systems and providers, academic medical centers and research institutions, medical device manufacturers, and pharmaceutical and wellness companies on intellectual property and business transactions in key strategic areas, including EHR systems procurement and integration, telehealth, wearable devices, remote patient monitoring, mobile health applications, clinical decision support technologies, artificial intelligence, data use, research and collaborations, patent licenses, software licenses, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, revenue cycle management, and other outsourcing transactions.
Before entering private practice, Michael founded a software-as-a-service company and completed an in-house secondment at a publicly traded biotechnology company, an experience that informs his practical and business-focused approach to client engagements.
Transcript:
Mike Orlando:
From hospital boardrooms to startup war rooms, this is Health-e Law. Powered by Sheppard Mullin’s Digital Health and Innovation team, we bring you 15 minutes of sharp analysis, industry voices, and what’s next.
Welcome to Health-e Law. I’m Mike Orlando, a partner at Sheppard and the host for today’s episode. I’m happy to welcome this episode’s guest, Amanda Zablocki. Amanda Zablocki is the co-chair of Sheppard’s Healthcare group, which was recently named Healthcare Practice Group of the Year by Law360 for the fifth time. Amanda’s practice focuses on strategic healthcare transactions, representing healthcare systems, healthcare plans, and other healthcare organizations. Amanda brings deep industry expertise from her work with clients across the healthcare spectrum. Welcome, Amanda.
Amanda Zablocki:
Thanks, Mike. Thank you so much for having me.
Mike Orlando:
So I know you were just at J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, and the industry news is awash with buzzwords like AI and innovation. Industry leaders like yourself met at J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, which is the largest and most informative healthcare symposium in the industry. I just wanted to know if those buzzwords were prominent in discussions with attendees.
Amanda Zablocki:
Definitely AI. I will say that the word “innovation” has become a little bit more interesting. I think that’s been replaced with “be bold” and “take action,” and I think that we’re past the ideating stage and more into the implementation and how do we execute on these big ideas that we have.
Mike Orlando:
So in your experience, what are executives and boards, and I guess investors, also, needing to understand about how technology shows up in purchase price and deal structures right now?
Amanda Zablocki:
I would say that technology is more and more prominent in these conversations, given the leaps and bounds in which AI is changing platforms. Integrating operations is becoming a real focal point, and frankly, a pain point. It’s becoming more challenging and complex as there’s a reckoning internally within each partner around old and new technology. What have they brought on? What do they need to change?
And then when you think about a combination transaction, where oftentimes the parties are looking to integrate their platforms and achieve economies of scale, that question is no longer an obvious answer. It’s a real dissection of what does your platform look like? And both today and tomorrow, where is it going? So it’s definitely influencing the deal discussions.
It’s not necessarily influencing deal structure. It is affecting valuation and understanding what is the value that the party is bringing to the table? What is the cost associated with integrating platforms or modernizing platforms? That’s becoming a much bigger cost. What I will say is, really, it’s less deal structure than deal feasibility, at the end of the day. I’ve seen deals die over a lack of mutual alignment around how technology platforms will be integrated.
Mike Orlando:
And focusing on that technology, specifically on AI, and you mentioned the changes, one of the changes is the promise to improve patient outcomes and the use of AI, streamline operations, reduce the administrative burden, et cetera. And how do you see digital health becoming a decisive factor in the next wave of consolidation among all the hospitals and health systems and health plans?
Amanda Zablocki:
It’s actually already a driver, and it has been for a couple of years now. Obviously, that is continuing to increase as we see AI evolve and the need to adopt and implement rapidly become that much more prominent. As I mentioned earlier, we’re moving away from this idea of ideating over technology and really towards implementation. And I think that there are a group of haves and have-nots right now, and the have-nots are looking for better technology and to compete with bigger companies who are potentially far ahead of them in terms of AI adoption. And all of that comes at a high cost.
So that is driving decision-making around whether or not to do a deal. It’s really propelling discussions around partnerships and joint ventures to try and gain access to technology without having to invest the same amount of capital that you might otherwise have to do on your own, but it’s also driving conversations around large-scale affiliations with the sense that we need to really rethink our entire platform and way of business. So technology is really becoming this driver for M&A in order for parties to gain greater access to capital to support the technology or existing technology, and then scale in both directions, whether you’re a buyer or target, to really spread the cost of the significant investment required to adopt these new technologies.
Mike Orlando:
So following up on the complex decision-making that you mentioned, specifically for the payers and providers, how much does technology leadership, or I guess a lack of a technology leadership, influence whether an organization becomes a buyer, a partner, or a target?
Amanda Zablocki:
This is such a great question. I think that technology leadership is becoming almost table stakes in any organization’s ability to maintain negotiating leverage, regardless of what side of the table you’re sitting on. So from a buyer’s perspective, if you don’t have strong technology leadership, you’re going to have a hard time attracting targets. You’re going to have a hard time telling your story, particularly in the nonprofit, or predominantly nonprofit world that I live in. There’s a question of, “How are you going to sustain our mission in the future if you don’t have a robust technology platform that will take us into the future after a sale?”
If you’re a target, it’s going to go to your valuation, it’s going to go to governance and control issues. If you don’t have control over your technology platform, if it’s archaic, if it’s slow-moving, if it’s something that is going to cost a lot of money to revitalize, to modernize, and bring up to current standards, that goes to your purchase price.
It also goes to issues like control and governance because there’s a trust question of, “Okay, I’m buyer and I want to acquire a target,” often in nonprofit context, we do membership substitutions, you have a parent and a subsidiary, and the tension is how much local autonomy will that target have after the transaction and how much will they be controlled by their new parent? And if you don’t have an efficient, effective platform from a technological standpoint, you’re going to have a much harder time as a target demonstrating that you can maintain local autonomy over your business. It’s a potential red flag to a partner. So even we see a number of what I’ll call mergers of equals or joint ventures where the technological deficiencies on one party side could switch a joint venture or a merger of equals into you being a target in that scenario or the minority position in that scenario.
Mike Orlando:
You mentioned the technology impacting the organization itself and the business. I just want to focus a little bit more on how is the technology impacting the business of healthcare, including tools to find investment or strategic partners.
Amanda Zablocki:
So I actually want to take this question in a little bit, slightly different direction, if that’s okay, Mike. A lot of people talk about the mechanics of the technology and what technology you’re using, but I actually think the part of the conversation that’s often missing is the shifting of sands when it comes to technology today.
If everything is constantly evolving, how do you as a business keep up? The ability to keep pace is going to be the most crucial question, in my mind, for any transaction, whether you’re contemplating a transaction in the near future or as one of your scenarios in your scenario planning. At the highest level of leadership in the organization, I think the question is really going to be, do you have a board and do you have a C-suite that is beholden to the way things have always been done, or that is ready to lean into change?
And then beyond that, and maybe even more important, is do you have a workforce that is nimble and that can be quickly upskilled when the next wave of technology comes? The faster companies are able to move, to adopt, and implement in an ethically and responsible way, the better position they will be to take advantage of and not be overwhelmed by the rapidly evolving technological landscape. And for those who are considering M&A or strategic transactions, the better position they will be to position themselves as a leader in this space and someone who is going to be a responsible partner on the other side of a deal.
Mike Orlando:
So it sounds like, from a technology standpoint, in the business of healthcare, those who have a better grasp of technology are an advantage. And I’d like to focus on whether health systems and health plans in that context are the emerging capabilities and technology truly changing how the M&A targets are prioritized, given what you’ve just mentioned, or do traditional factors like scale and market share and network reach and the geographic footprint still dominate the deal strategy? I
Amanda Zablocki:
Don’t think you can separate them, right? It’s all wrapped together. Technology is changing how we think about scale, how we think about reach, how we think about the need for fiscal footprint. It really is inseparable from all of those things. So those continue to be deal drivers, but it’s in the context of a changing technological landscape. And both changing as in terms of what does the technology look like today, but also some crystal balling over where it’s going in the future. Because there may be something to be said about scale is no longer the most important thing in this context because we’ve got some technological solutions that will reduce costs, but maybe we’re not going to hit that efficiency until year five, so in the meantime, we do need scale. So it’s just part of the conversation, but it’s part of all these pieces and I don’t think you can separate out technology from that.
Mike Orlando:
One question I had was on more of the data assets piece of the technology, if we can focus on that for a second. In transactions involving the payers, how much weight is being placed on the data assets, the analytics platforms, AI-driven care, utilization management tools, those types of things?
Amanda Zablocki:
It’s about the same weight as before, but just with a different lens. So where we might’ve looked at each of those pieces independently and said, “How are these performing and is there use in a combination?” What I would say the differentiating factor today is this macro view. We’re moving beyond just looking at these slices and silos and really questioning whether or not each of these pieces are communicating with each other effectively. Do these solutions speak to each other and optimize the value each solution brings the bigger picture?
Now we’re seeing more of our clients start to talk about, “Well, how do we either find a single solution or two or three solutions or really consolidate the solutions themselves, or find ways to make these solutions integrate and talk to each other more effectively?”
On the health plan side, I know there’s also health plans that are developing their own solutions in house. In the context of a transaction, how do those solutions translate to other health plans? That’s going to be a big question. I see that question coming up in my deals today.
Mike Orlando:
So it sounds like there’s some cost-benefit analysis going on and I’m seeing that there may be a divergence between what the deal teams want and what the technology or operation leaders view as mission-critical. Is that true? And how do you see that divergence?
Amanda Zablocki:
It can be. I think that when you’re doing the diligence, and in a nonprofit affiliation transaction, as one example, there’s often diligence in both directions to understand what the technology looks like and how it’s operationalized in each organization and whether or not this is a compatible fit, where the technology team’s objectives, their big wants, their dreams for where they see that organization going maybe don’t get achieved, and yet the organization still makes a choice to move forward with the transaction.
And that’s because, at the end of the day, the mission of healthcare is to do your best for the patients, the community, the providers that you serve. And it’s not necessarily true that the better, best technology is going to be the best for your patients if you have to spend a significant amount of capital in order to access it. Maybe you can get away with something that’s not quite the best, but it is effective and have excess capital to be used towards other things that further your mission.
So there is a tension, a little bit, between deal teams and technology teams. But what I will say, and I think this is important advice for companies thinking about a transaction, is have your chief technology officer or your leaders sit in the deal team. Don’t exclude them. Don’t wait too long to talk about the technology issues. I do see that mistake being made on occasion where the technology piece isn’t figured out until after terms are fully negotiated. And at that point, it becomes much more challenging to restructure a deal, to think about different solutions. And you may have a chief technology officer that says, “We can’t do this. This is going to cost us hundreds of millions of dollars to implement integration,” and you spend a lot of resources on that transaction, and when the deal fails, it’s a lot more painful.
We’re in this transitional period, and as long as we’re in that period, it’s going to continue to be essential to ensuring that the transaction is going to further the mission and achieve the objectives that the organization sets out for that transaction.
Mike Orlando:
Well, Amanda, that’s been some great insight into all the transactions that you’ve been a part of and how technology fits into that. I want to lead with a last question. Since you were just at JPM, I just want to ask you, was there something that you didn’t hear at JPM that you thought should have been part of the discussion?
Amanda Zablocki:
So as a lawyer, I would be remiss to say, obviously we need to also be discussing the very rapidly evolving legal and regulatory landscape that underpins all of this. From a statewide perspective, from a federal perspective, from a policy standpoint, from Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement perspective, CMS enforcement around fraud, waste and abuse, there’s so many other pieces to the puzzle that when you’re implementing new technology from a HIPAA perspective, there’s just so much that you can get tripped up over. And I’ve seen that happen from time to time when we talk about consolidation and all the things that organizations are going to try and do to solve the problem or to embrace the opportunity presented by AI, depending on your perspective. So I think that there’s a lot on the legal policy regulatory side of the equations that we could probably do another week in San Francisco on.
Mike Orlando:
I’m sure we could. I really appreciate the time you’ve spent today with me and I appreciate all the insight and helpful tips, and, really, thank you for coming on today.
Amanda Zablocki:
Thank you for having me.
Mike Orlando:
That’s a wrap on this episode of Health-e Law, powered by Sheppard Mullin, where healthcare innovation meets legal expertise. Until next time, stay healthy and stay informed.
Resources:
Women in Leadership Healthcare Collaborative (WHLC)
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