DEERFIELD, Ill. — The chaotic U.S. health care landscape is clearly one filled with opportunity to Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), which has launched several new initiatives since the start of the year.

During a recent presentation at the virtual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, WBA executive vice president and chief financial officer James Kehoe described the industry background that has prompted the recent moves.

“Our ambition, whether it’s in retail pharmacy or health care, is to create an ecosystem of digital and physical assets,” he said. “So looking forward, we see quite a lot of change in the health care market. There are rapidly changing patient health care needs, and COVID has driven this even faster. So as we sit here now, we’re looking at a new set of opportunities that are probably not the same opportunities that we were looking at 12 months ago.”

The company started 2021 with a major move, announcing the sale of its Alliance Healthcare division to AmerisourceBergen Corp. (ABC) for approximately $6.5 billion. AmerisourceBergen had approached WBA about a possible deal last May.

In addition to that transaction, which will allow WBA to increase its focus on expanding its core retail pharmacy business, the two companies are strengthening their strategic partnership by extending and expanding their commercial agreements, including their U.S. distribution agreement, which will be extended three years to 2029. The two companies have also committed to pursue additional sourcing and distribution opportunities.

The same day that the Alliance Healthcare deal was unveiled, WBA revealed that it will accelerate the rollout of VillageMD primary care clinics in Walgreens drug stores. The company is investing $1 billion (including the initial $250 million equity investment in VillageMD) over three years to open 600 to 700 clinics in more than 30 markets. The move makes Walgreens the only national pharmacy chain to provide on a large scale full-service primary care clinics co-located in its stores.

Shortly thereafter, WBA made a majority investment in iA (formerly Innovations Associates), a provider of software-enabled automation solutions for retail, hospital, federal health care and mail-order pharmacies. The investment will support iA’s expansion and further development of automation solutions to benefit the entire pharmacy industry.

According to Alex Gourlay, co-chief operating officer of WBA, the idea behind the iA deal is to create a new pharmacy operating model that takes numerous current tasks away from the pharmacists and frees them up to focus more on the coordination of care in the health care system.

Finally, a recent agreement with Synchrony and Mastercard expands WBA’s financial services offerings to consumers with credit cards and prepaid debit cards.

In addition, Kehoe and Gourlay discussed a technology-enabled health care startup now taking shape within WBA. The goal of the stand-alone entity will be to simplify the health care experience by delivering personalized health care solutions through an integrated omnichannel platform.