Douglas “Doug” Brown
Founder and President, Black Book Research
Serial Entrepreneur | Business Author | 2026 International Book Awards Finalist | Healthcare and Supply-Chain Market-Intelligence Leader | Leader of a Seven-Time Inc. 5000 Company
Doug Brown is the founder and president of Black Book Research, LLC, an author, veteran healthcare executive, and serial entrepreneur whose career has encompassed hospital administration, managed care, healthcare technology, enterprise business development, outsourcing advisory, competitive intelligence, and global market research. With more than three decades of experience in healthcare systems management and technology markets, Brown has built his career around a central principle: consequential business and technology decisions should be informed by independent evidence, verified customer experience, transparent methodology, and measurable performance.
His executive career includes senior positions with McKesson, Thermo Fisher Scientific, HCA, and BayCare Health System, giving him direct experience across healthcare delivery, technology commercialization, corporate operations, and institutional decision-making. Wiley’s professional biography also documents Brown’s senior operations-management and executive business-development experience in both Fortune 500 corporations and entrepreneurial ventures, particularly within healthcare and information technology. This combination of provider-side, corporate, and startup experience has enabled him to examine healthcare technology markets from the perspectives of buyers, operators, investors, vendors, and patients.
A serial entrepreneur, Brown has founded or co-founded multiple market-research, outsourcing, and advisory enterprises. He was president and co-founder of the Outsourcing Management Institute, and in 2003, co-founded the Brown-Wilson Group, where he helped develop the Black Book of Outsourcing research platform and its distinctive approach to client-experience measurement and vendor benchmarking. In 2009, Datamonitor, a subsidiary of Informa, acquired the Black Book of Outsourcing business, describing it at the time as an internationally established sourcing-research brand with independent research capabilities and a significant client base. The transaction represented a major entrepreneurial milestone and established Brown as an influential figure in global outsourcing research.
Brown subsequently applied those research disciplines to the increasingly complex healthcare technology market. Under his leadership, Black Book Research has developed a vendor-agnostic intelligence platform focused on healthcare software, managed services, outsourcing, interoperability, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, revenue-cycle management, digital health infrastructure, and operational transformation. Black Book reports that its 2026 research library encompasses more than 240 annual stakeholder reports and market coverage of over 16,000 technology products, software applications, outsourced services, and platforms. The coverage now also includes 20,000 medical instruments, products, and equipment reviews.
Rather than relying solely on analyst opinion or vendor-supplied information, Black Book’s research model emphasizes validated stakeholder feedback, qualitative performance indicators, buyer-side evidence, and transparent scoring. Its current work addresses some of healthcare’s most consequential technology questions, including responsible AI governance, cyber-downtime preparedness, prior-authorization modernization, payer and provider interoperability, revenue-cycle automation, rural-hospital technology, and the development of clinical data architectures capable of supporting future AI applications.
Author and International Book Awards Finalist
In 2026, The Black Book of Reshoring was selected as an International Book Awards Finalist in the Business: General category. The recognition placed Brown’s work alongside books from major international business publishers, including Harvard Business Review Press, Penguin Random House, and Wiley.
Brown first achieved broad recognition as the co-author, with Scott Wilson, of The Black Book of Outsourcing: How to Manage the Changes, Challenges, and Opportunities, published by Wiley in 2005. The Wall Street Journal best-seller list book provided executives, investors, sourcing professionals, and employees with a practical framework for evaluating outsourcing opportunities, structuring vendor relationships, managing transitions, measuring performance, and navigating the organizational consequences of global sourcing. Wiley describes the work as a comprehensive, bestselling manual on the evolving outsourcing industry.
More than two decades later, Brown returned to the forces reshaping global production with The Black Book of Reshoring: The Essential Guide to America’s New Manufacturing Boom. Published by Wiley in 2026, the book examines the strategic movement from offshore dependency toward domestic and regional production, addressing factory-footprint decisions, capital allocation, tariffs, supply-chain economics, automation, artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced manufacturing, and the trade-offs between global sourcing efficiency and domestic resilience. The book debuted at #3 on the Amazon best seller Business Book list.
Recognized Supply-Chain Thought Leader
Brown’s work has increasingly connected healthcare technology research with the broader transformation of American manufacturing and supply chains. In June 2026, he was included on the “50 Outstanding Thought Leaders in Supply Chain” list. The accompanying profile highlighted his contributions to reshoring strategy and to the transformation of healthcare and manufacturing supply chains, as well as his analysis of the strategic tension between globally optimized sourcing and domestically resilient operating models.
This recognition reflects the expanding scope of Brown’s research. His work now links healthcare technology procurement with industrial policy, domestic production capacity, critical infrastructure, AI-enabled manufacturing, sourcing risk, and supply-chain resilience. Through his books, reports, public commentary, and executive research, he helps leaders consider not merely what technology or service to purchase, but where critical capabilities should reside, how organizations should measure strategic dependency, and how resilience can be incorporated into long-term capital and operating decisions.
Entrepreneurial Growth and Industry Honors
Under Brown’s leadership, Black Book Research achieved seven consecutive appearances on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies from 2017 through 2023. The company debuted at No. 601 in 2017 and ranked No. 2,395 in 2023, when it was also reported among the leading healthcare-industry service firms for three-year growth.
In 2023, the Business Intelligence Group named Black Book Market Research LLC a SAMMY Product of the Year winner in the Very Small Company category. The Sales and Marketing Technology Awards (known as the Sammys) recognize organizations and technologies that improve how companies understand, reach, and engage their markets. Black Book received the distinction for its market-intelligence and competitive-research technology.
These distinctions document more than commercial growth. They reflect Brown’s ability to convert specialized research methodologies into scalable intelligence products serving healthcare organizations, technology buyers, investors, consultants, managed-care organizations, and vendors operating in rapidly changing markets.
International Healthcare and Interoperability Leadership
Brown’s recent work has extended Black Book’s research into global health-data infrastructure and open, standards-based interoperability. In October 2025, he was selected to deliver a keynote address at openEHR’s EHRCON25 conference in Barcelona, titled “Identifying Global Growth Opportunities for openEHR Adoption in 2026 and Beyond.” The presentation examined the policy, investment, technology, and market conditions driving adoption of openEHR and other data-centric healthcare architectures. He has also been a presenter at HIMSS, HFMA and AHIMA conferences since 1989.
Black Book’s subsequent 2026–2027 research has continued that work, analyzing the movement from application-centric electronic health record deployments toward durable, semantically governed clinical-data infrastructure. Brown’s research emphasizes the growing need for longitudinal records that remain usable across changing applications, vendors, and technology generations and that can support analytics and AI without sacrificing clinical meaning or institutional control. Brown is also currently listed by openEHR as a speaker for EHRCON26 in Amsterdam in September 2026, further extending his role in the international discussion surrounding interoperability, health-data sovereignty, open standards, and AI-ready clinical information systems.
Academic and Professional Foundation
Brown holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Public Administration from the University of Florida, a Master of Science in Hospital and Healthcare Administration from the University of Houston, and postgraduate credentials in Global Marketing Management from the London School of Economics. Together, these disciplines provided a foundation in healthcare operations, organizational leadership, public policy, international business, and market strategy.
His professional affiliations have included the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the Insights Association, formerly the Marketing Research Association, and ESOMAR. These associations reflect Brown’s longstanding commitment to independent research, ethical data collection, respondent integrity, transparent methodology, and the responsible interpretation of market evidence.
Across two major business books, multiple entrepreneurial ventures, an international research career, and more than three decades of healthcare and technology leadership, Brown’s work connects several defining eras of modern business: the globalization and outsourcing movement of the early 2000s, the emergence of data-driven healthcare technology evaluation, and today’s renewed focus on reshoring, resilient supply chains, responsible AI, interoperability, and domestically sustainable growth.
His continuing objective is to ensure that healthcare executives, technology buyers, investors, policymakers, and business leaders have access to evidence that is independent, actionable, and grounded in the experience of the people who actually use, purchase, implement, and depend upon critical technologies.
Selected Honors, Distinctions, and Milestones
- 2026 International Book Awards Finalist — Business: General, for The Black Book of Reshoring.
- Named among the “50 Outstanding Thought Leaders in Supply Chain USA”, ranked No. 44 in 2026.
- Confirmed EHRCON26 speaker, Amsterdam, September 2026 and Selected keynote speaker at EHRCON25, Barcelona, October 2025.
- Seven consecutive Inc. 5000 company appearances, 2017–2023.
- 2023 SAMMY Product of the Year, Business Intelligence Group, awarded to Black Book Market Research LLC.
- Co-founder of Brown-Wilson Group, whose Black Book of Outsourcing business was acquired by Informa in London UK in 2009.
- Co-author of the Bestselling Black Book of Outsourcing, Wiley, 2005.
Books by Douglas Brown
The Black Book of Reshoring
The Essential Guide to America’s New Manufacturing Boom
Wiley, 2026
Author: Douglas Brown
2026 International Book Awards Finalist — Business: General
The Black Book of Outsourcing
How to Manage the Changes, Challenges, and Opportunities
Wiley, 2005
Authors: Douglas Brown and Scott Wilson