A recent article posted by Luke Timmerman of Xconomy.com paints a bleak picture for the state of biotech investment. He explains that the general public no longer views biotech as worthy of the almighty buzz factor, i.e., the magazine cover stories and TV morning shows so important to the elusive independent investor. He suggests that the biotechnology industry may never capture the public’s imagination again, a strong assertion considering the amazing things happening in genomic research, companion diagnostics, medical technology, telemedicine and other parts of the sector. But is the buzz factor the only thing that matters in an age of consumer empowerment? What about the equally powerful phenomenon of simply going viral?
In some ways Mr. Timmerman’s article, in which he speaks of investor excitement for TECHnology versus BIOTECHnology, may not present a fair comparison. Facebook and LinkedIn do not have an entity like the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) that sends years of data to the trashcan more frequently than it approves a product for use. Nor do many technologies reckon with the complex reimbursement issues faced by products utilized within the healthcare system.
Clearly, the pathway to popularity and acceptance for a Linkedin is different from the pathway for a new clinical assay. Adoption of a new test or device is a challenge because it has to captivate a group of specialists (i.e., physicians) rather than the general public or patients themselves. Hence, Mr. Timmerman may be off in his analogy unless the general public becomes the primary audience that needs to be convinced the test is useful—changing the paradigm in which physicians play the directors in medical decision-making.
With all that said, I do believe the consumer is going to move the adoption of medical technology forward using tools like the iPhone. My kids have no idea what life is like without mobile phones, for example. Just as they understand that much of life is accessible with their phones, they will likely want to use the power of their handheld devices to request a test or to influence the direction of their own health care.
Consumer driven health care is what will capture the public’s imagination. What are your thoughts about the power that consumer demand will play in future biotech investment? Share them here.
Tags: biotech, biotech investment, biotechnology, clinical assays, consumer empowerment, FDA, luke timmerman, technology, xconomy
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With the abundance of information available online today, sometimes it’s hard to sort through the SPAM to find quality sources of news and opinions, particularly if you want to stay current on trends and policies in healthcare and medical technology. I’m here to help with some of my favorite sites for great info on these topics. Add your picks to the comments, and together we can create a resource to sort through the junk.
The Healthcare Blog: WebMd dubs this blog “a free-wheeling discussion of the latest healthcare developments.” I enjoyed last week’s post on “The Incredible and Wasteful Complexity of the U.S. Healthcare System,” which provided a brief and twistedly entertaining look at the mishmash of laws, regulations, and other pieces that combine to create complexity and inefficiency in the U.S. healthcare system.
MedGadget.com: The “internet journal of emerging medical technologies” has something for anyone interested in gadgets and medicine. A recent article spoke of new medical scrubs featuring fabric patterns based on micrographs of pathogens. What an opportune way for every nurse, medical student and hospital staffer to stand out from the crowd.
The Medical Technology Caucus: From the U.S. House of Representatives, the Medical Technology Caucus is a bi-partisan organization comprised of 48 representatives whose purpose is to raise awareness among House members of critical issues relating to medical technology. For the citizen reader, it’s a good source of medical technology news in the political sphere.
Mobi Health News: This is the go-to source for information about the practical convergence of healthcare and mobile technology. One recent article (“Albert: iPad has already won healthcare tablet war”) covers the electrocardiogram (ECG) app and the developer’s thoughts about tablet and iPad use for medical purposes.
Aza Raskin’s Blog: This blog is full of unique insights from the cofounder for Massive Health, who formerly served as creative lead for Firefox and before that was the head of user experience for Mozilla Labs. In The Story of Paul MacCready, Aza writes about Gossamer Condor as an example of creative problem solving.
Share your favorite links to stories, apps, great blogs and more with us here. We’d love to learn what inspires you.
Tags: biotech, healthcare information, healthcare resources, lifesci, medtech information, medtech resources, online information, technology resources, what we read
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Danaher Corporation (NYSE:DHR) announced today (see San Francisco Chronicle story here) that it has entered into an agreement with Beckman Coulter, Inc. (NYSE: BEC) to acquire Beckman for approximately $6.8 billion. When the acquisition is complete, Beckman will become part of Danaher’s Life Sciences and Diagnostics business segment.
This is yet another example of the diagnostics landscape’s rapid upheaval in which different players will clearly be dominating and leading the industry.
The diagnostics industry shake up is in full swing: As we wrote recently, sequencing technology (one critical part of the Dx space) is changing at an earth-shattering speed and today’s announcement is evidence of what is happening on the market level. Need more evidence? Check out this post by Xconomy’s Luke Timmerman on “diagnostics warming up.”
There’s little doubt that established diagnostics players will have interesting strategic responses to all of this change as they move to shore up their product positions and to maintain their channel franchises.
In all, it’s a great time to be in diagnostics and a broader variety of partnering and exit opportunities are emerging for small, innovative diagnostic companies. We’ll be writing about other diagnostics and device industry trends and changes in our blog (including a post later this week on the FDA’s recently announced 510(k) action plan). We’d love to hear what you think (so please leave a comment below) and we hope you’ll continue to read our views here.
Tags: beckman coulter, biotech, Caroline Popper, danaher corporation, devices, FDA, life sciences, sequencing
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A recent issue of The New Yorker included an interesting article by Jonah Lehrer entitled, The Truth Wears Off—Is there something wrong with the scientific method? The article focuses on the “decline effect,” which has been observed and debated in various studies in disciplines ranging from psychology to pharmacology to biomedical research. One of the observations is: As more trials were conducted with a given agent, the less efficacious that agent appeared. In many cases, the agent was no better than its predecessor, even though the initial study results were significant.
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Tags: biotech, FDA, jonah lehrer, JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, life sciences, medical technology, patti doherty, product development
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When it comes to the life science industry, many have made 2011 predictions, including renowned biotech specialist, venture capitalist, and frequent public speaker Steve Burrill. It’s not all that surprising that he envisions much of what will happen in the year ahead will be based upon an environment that favors risk-mitigated companies, emerging biotechnology markets (e.g., Brazil and China), and challenges due to U.S. healthcare reform.
While I encourage you to take a look at his full list of predictions, I’m most interested in those that tie to some of the topics we’ve been discussing since we launched this blog in November, especially with regard to converging technologies.
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Tags: biotech, converging technologies, Health care predictions 2011, iPhone, Ken Walz, life sciences, mHealth, Steve Burrill
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