Today, we focused on Technology and the Biobusiness revolution. Prof showed us the various areas of biobusiness and further narrowed our focus to healthcare and biomedical sciences. We looked into the different parts of biomedical biobusiness including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, herbal and traditional medicine. We differentiated between healthcare revolution, which focused more on services and biomedical science revolution, which focused on treatments.
Key Ideas / Observations
“The biobusiness revolution has the potential to / WILL transform our lives (Health, food, clothes, energy sources, others) of our economies.
It is indeed impressive what the bioscience and healthcare arena has achieved till today. For example, IVF has become a norm to overcome female infertility. Indeed the future looks bright for this arena. With our knowledge of DNA advancing, and the completion of the human genome project, personalized treatments has become possible to dealing with diseases. Personalized medical care in oncology is currently a reality for a select group of cancers. With improved knowledge of tumor biology and the advent of novel technologies allowing identification of molecular targets, it has become possible to develop therapies against different subsets of cancers.
Even Netrogena has come up with a personalized treatment approach to solving teenager Acne problems as shown in the link below: http://www.skinid.com/econsumer/clearskin/index.view
Teenagers can purchase netrogena products according to their skin type, their type of acne and even their stress levels. And all this can be done online!
NOTES – the new method of surgery to remove kidney stones boasts less pain and less risks of infection as compared to other forms of surgery. I personally would prefer such a method as compared to open surgery as less ‘cutting’ is involved. However the claim that NOTES is the least invasive method that can ever be attained is probably untrue. Prof already mentioned about an advanced treatment using wave energy to rupture the kidney stones. I found this extremely interesting and went to read up on it. Extracorporal shock wave Lithotripsy is a non-surgical treatment in which shock wave energy is use to break the stone into smaller fragments which then can pass more easily through the urinary system. The success rate is 70-90%, however there are several limitations of this procedure such as large, hard or impacted stones and treatment in overweight patients.
In the reading on disruptive innovation, the paper talks about the need for disruptive innovation in the healthcare industry. Innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect are required. One of the ways suggested is by enabling a larger population of less-skilled people to do in a more convenient, less expensive setting things that historically could be performed only by expensive specialists in centralized, inconvenient locations. Rather than asking expensive professionals to move down-market, we need to focus on enabling less expensive professionals to do progressively more sophisticated things in less expensive settings. For example, equipping nurses to treat more advanced diseases without the need for a physician. In a way, I feel that Netrogena is doing just that with its personalized acne medication. There is no longer a need for dermatologists to recommend these products to teenagers based on their skin condition as they can order their own personalized products online.
I found Nicholas’ presentation on policies that would cause a positive impact on the healthcare scene in 3rd world countries very interesting. I feel that in the short term, the pricing of the drugs is most imperative. In the short term, making drugs more accessible to the poor needs to be the government’s main priority. In the long term, governments need to focus on R&D. I feel that most pharmaceutical industries may not be interested in researching in better ways to due with 3rd world diseases like Malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis because the poor people there cannot afford to purchase their treatments. On the other hand, they are keener to research on western diseases like cancer and heart diseases because the people who have these diseases are rich and can thus afford their treatments. Of course, I do realize that this may depend on level of CSR in the pharmaceutical industry. I feel that governments can play a vital role here by putting in money for R&D into specifically, third world diseases. They can do R&D jointly with pharmaceutical companies to cover their costs and risks. Governments can also invite foreign pharmaceutical companies to set up plants in 3rd world countries so they can understand 3rd world diseases better and can provide first-hand help to people living there. Hence R&D is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, we need to focus R&D on specific diseases that would benefit the 3rd world.
Key takeaways
There is much potential in the biobusiness arena. As Clayton Christensen mentioned in his report, we do need to focus on ‘disruptive innovations’. We need to enable a larger population of less-skilled people to do in a more convenient, less expensive setting things that historically could be performed only by expensive specialists in centralized, inconvenient locations.
R&D is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution. In terms of diseases, developing countries and developed countries may have different needs. Hence, to benefit developing countries, we need to focus R&D on their diseases.
Issues for further discussion
I feel that the topic on genetic engineering and cloning could have been discussed deeper. In predicting whether cloning will become a norm in the future, Prof showed us the example of IVF (test-tube babies),which was also widely rejected when it was first discovered, but now is accepted as a norm to dealing with female infertility. Will cloning, in the future, also become a norm?
Ratings
7/10. There were a lot of readings but I found most of them rather interesting and though-provoking. The number of presentations was also less than usual and hence gave us more room for discussions.
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