Biotech and Medtech - Inventions & Patents

There is a marked contrast between the US and Canadian health care systems.  Having worked in both systems, I have often compared them staying as in Days Inn as the only choice (for Canadians) as opposed to the US system where you have a choice of staying either at the Hilton and or the Budget Motel.  The freedom to choose comes at a price and some may say too much.  An opinion piece published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine on Feb 7, 2008 blaming the failure of market forces to deliver optimal health care is surely going raise this issue to the next level of debate in this election year.  This article is written by Robert Kuttner, a well known and well respected left-leaning liberal writer-commentator.  He is the co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect,  "an authoritative magazine of liberal ideas," according to its mission statement.

He crafted very cogent arguments for his point of view against a backdrop of the US health care system being an outlier against international practices.  Medicare statistics indicate that the average cost of health care for every person in the United States is $7,000 and this amounts to over $2.1 trillion.  He offered an alternative interpretation how the US health care system ended in the current extreme state of failure.  He stated that the pervasive commercialization of health care not only did not create an efficient market but has unintended consequences contributing to the massive market failure.   Kuttner claims that market forces for cost containment are generally targeted at maximizing shareholder values and the burden has fallen on the primary care physicians with increased case load, relying on tests rather than hands on diagnostic skill and referring to specialists when none is necessary.

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We are currently working in stealth mode on a journal article management plus academic networking software.  This has been previewed by a limited and trusted audience.  The initial reaction was why are you doing another one when there is already Endnotes and now Zotero out there.  I needed justification and inspiration as to why we are doing this as I am funding this project myself.

I am sure Steve Job was confronted with the same type of skepticism when he worked on iTune, iPod and iPhone.  Then I began to do more research on this including viewing all the videos of Steve Jobs posted on Youtube.  It was an interesting journey of discovery including re-reading Steve Jobs' commencement address at Stanford which I read more than 2 years ago.   Here is the full text......

In designing medical devices or developing new products in the biotech industry, patent review is part and parcel of the due diligence process prior to committing resources into a project. Increasingly the engineers or scientists either by themselves or in consultation with IP professionals, have to make some kind of freedom-to-operate determination. Often times such decisions are subjective. The recent ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on "willful infringement" could make things a little easier for the engineers and scientists.... 

 A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (Ford) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile....

Jim Larrick, MD PhD runs a private research institute called Panorama Research in Mountain View, California (a stone throw from Google headquarter).  This private research institute competes on equal terms with academic institutions for research grants from NIH and other federal agencies including SBIR grants.  Jim has founded 14 biotech companies out of Panorama Research of which 4 have gone IPO (some through mergers).  This is not a bad record for a private research institute.  Many universities would have love such a track record.

Jim is first and foremost a maverick; not the type that will fit well in an academic institution.  He is not only an entrepreneur but also a consummate scientist with a solid track record of having published over 240 peer review journal articles.  He published one of the first books on oncogene with Ed Liu, currently the Executive Director of the Genome Institute of Singapore.

He was recently in Africa with the Sanofa Center for African Dance & Culture.  The purpose of this trip was to promote AIDS awareness through the medium of dance.  Jim's production company, Slick Production (no kidding), produced a moving documentary in HDTV format about this trip.  You can view a sample of the documentary from here and a new trailer from here.

I reported in December that Google has launched patent search service ("Google Patent Search is Hot"). The major deficiencies are you cannot print or download a copy of the PDF file. No more ...........

One of the intent of this Blog is to introduce sources of information which the reader may otherwise not be aware of. For those of us involved in product development for medical devices, we have in the past relied on peer review journals, trade magazines and trade shows for information. In September last year I introduced bmesource.org as one of the best in the industry. I would also like to draw your attention to several other sources which are specific to orthopedics.