Many of the healthcare headlines lately have been about consolidation in the industry: Walmart and Humana; Aetna and CVS; Amazon, JP Morgan, and Berkshire Hathaway. But what does it all mean for patients, and startups -- Will it decrease costs? What opportunities may arise as a result? In this quick hallway-style conversation, originally recorded as a video, some of the partners on the a16z bio team (Jorge Conde and Vijay Pande in conversation with Jeffrey Low) discuss what's going on as we see more and more vertical integration across the healthcare value chain.

Hypothesis, test, revise -- that's science. Engineering, however, doesn't quite go that way: You have parts you know and understand (like legos), and then you use those parts to design and build something (like bridges). But the key is that when science -- time-consuming, unpredictable, slow, expensive -- becomes more like engineering -- faster, more methodical/repeatable, cheaper -- you can do new things... or do them in better ways. This means engineering disciplines like mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, and materials science can carry over to biology. But the question is HOW does this happen, and how can entrepreneurs apply principles from one discipline to another? How does it affect a healthcare startup's go to market, and how might a shift like this affect the healthcare industry as a whole? Vijay Pande and Jorge Conde (general partners on our bio fund) reflect on all this and more in this hallway-style conversation episode of the a16z Podcast, which was originally recorded as a video.