While the drug industry continued to shun acquisitions in favor of alliances, service and device companies see mergers as the only way to go. Can diagnostics, still stubbornly unconsolidated, be far behind?

Drug firms and PBMs each bring valuable assets to the disease management party—and different, perhaps conflicting goals. But can they live without each other?

Will specialty managed care organizations like Medicon do to diagnostic imaging what PBMs have done to pharmaceuticals? Welcome to the next billion-dollar industry in health care: managing diagnostic imaging costs for frugal payers.

After years of delivering high-tech, high-cost treatments for cardiovascular disease, device companies are hard pressed to advance the cost-effective treatment arguments that drug companies have been touting in recent disease management programs. But in the cath lab, where price pressures are increasing, both ACS and SciMed are attempting a lateral entry into disease management through alliances with information systems companies.