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Pharma and biotech stocks, led by Eli Lilly, Biogen and Crispr, are setting up for significant gains as the new year begins, fueled by multibillion-dollar deals, upbeat clinical results and cutting-edge medical advances like CRISPR gene-editing hitting prime-time. The promise for a bright 2024 comes after roughly two years of abysmal performance. Biopharma stocks have taken a hit from the potential impact of upcoming Medicare drug price negotiations. Big Pharma also is bracing for a looming patent cliff that's expected to rock the industry later this decade.

These are hard times for the biotech sector. Barely a day goes by without layoffs being announced somewhere in Boston or California, and there are still more than 100 biotech stocks worth less than the cash they have in the bank. Yet there are also very clear signs that the worst might be over for the sector. For investors with a long-term horizon, a recent rally leaves plenty of room for further gains. The most important reason to bet that biotech has bottomed has nothing to do with the industry itself, but with the direction of borrowing costs.

You can’t completely blame Pfizer’s executives, yet Roche’s $7 billion acquisition of a bowel-disease treatment that it owned until last year isn’t a great look. In a deal that now feels like a biotech version of “Moneyball,” Roivant announced it was selling an asset that only 11 months ago it got for free from Pfizer. (The Wall Street Journal had reported the talks back in July). Big pharma companies focused on the drug industry equivalent of free agent signings will often overlook one of their own hot prospects. In fact, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy founded Roivant on the idea that pharma’s trash can be another company’s treasure. But this one became an almost instant All-Star.

Operating rooms are central to what hospitals do, but they're also at the root of a problem Woods and others at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) are trying to solve: how to reduce carbon pollution. "Operating rooms are a pretty small part of the physical footprint of a hospital, but they produce an outsized amount of the waste," Woods said.

The American healthcare system is experiencing a growing crisis: How do we adequately staff our operating rooms, hospitals, clinics and offices with healthcare professionals? The lack of staff crosses all professional lines, from physicians to nurses to lab technologists—all levels of staff are in short supply. To deal with this challenge, health administrators have resorted to using temporary contract workers known as locums. These temporary, stop-gap employees are usually paid multiple times more than permanent staff. This practice not only undervalues full-time employees, but also exacerbates the crisis because it robs staff from other facilities to staff another. Finally, the increase in locums, and its associated costs, has undeniably harmed the bottom line with many services and facilities closing down, further decreasing access to healthcare for the public.