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Thank you. Good morning. My topic is technological convergence.
David’s talk in personalized medicine is sort of an illustration of that.
I’m going to argue that it’s one of the major trends taking place in health care today
is the development of products and procedures
that combine multiple complementary technologies.
So, quick illustration outside the healthcare is the Apple Iphone.
The Iphone combines 23 existing applications or devices
that used to be separate
and it combines these into one product at one quarter of the cost.
So, you can see some of the implications of what technological convergence
might mean for healthcare.
Technological convergence will serve several different trends
taking place in healthcare.
Disease management which is coordinated care for chronic disease populations.
Personalized medicine which is the combination of drugs and diagnostic
test to serve patients with specific genomic make ups
and information technology and bioinformatics.
Technological convergence can take on many forms
the combination of any of these circles designated here.
Biologics communication technology imaging navigation,
bioinformatics implantable devices, nanotech polymers and materials sites.
All combinations can be included in technological convergence.
Much of technological convergence
will take the form of a targeted controlled local delivery of a drug
via a marriage with a device pictured over the right side.
So, technological convergence is really the marriage of different kinds of products.
Pharmaceuticals and biologics in the one side,
devices, cast litters and other material sides is on the others.
First technological convergent product was a drug eluding stent.
You take a bare metal stent, you add on to it and anti inflammatory drug
to reduce restenosis in clogged blood vessels to prop open and keep open arteries
so patients don’t have heart attacks.
The economic benefit is pictured here
and this is the world wide growth of drug eluding stents.
It is not just in the west, this is a world wide growth.
It is just showing some of the market potential.
The other thing is this can be market disruptors
as well basically taking away business from cardiac bypass surgery.
So, that there are disruptors as well as great market potential products.
Another example is the combination of spinal cage devise
with bone morphogenic protein,
a biologic inserted into the spine
which helps bone grow in the spinal cord reducing some of the pain
and improving the stability in the spine
with the next generation technological convergence product.
A third illustration is marrying navigation or imaging device
with minimally evasive surgery techniques
so you can actually implant a hip or a knee inside a patient
with much more precision so you don’t have to have as many revisions.
There is much less discomfort to the patient.
Very promising technological convergence product.
Another illustration much in the way that David talked to you about
is marrying drug development and administration
with a series of molecular profiling technologies
or the Omex, Prodiomex, Genomex, Metabelomex.
Basically and Herceptin was in the illustration,
but very proactive personalized medicine.
Another illustration will be marrying molecular biology
with high speed, high power computing.
This gives rise to the whole field of bio informatics
with modeling analysis. Visualization prediction
which will also be a critical component of personalized medicine.
Sixth illustration of convergence technology
will be marrying an insulin pump with a continuous blood glucose monitoring device
which will be part of the disease management for chronic illness.
Diabetes as a classic chronic illness. Not only prevalent in the west
but also in India and China. So, these products have world wide potential.
Then, you can take these blood glucose monitoring devices
hook them up to a mobile wireless devise
and then transmit data on the patient’s condition to a physician
which will help not only in the treatment of the individual patient
and the patient compliance with their diabetes medication
but also the effectiveness and treating populations
or subpopulations of patients who have diabetes.
The future of technological convergence one thing might be microchips
that are implanted in the body for program delivery of drugs,
other technological platforms
might be married together including tissue engineering, microelectric
mechanical systems, material science, robotics, Bio materials.
Technological convergence will have several challenges.
One is just marrying totally different cultures.
The cultures that pharmaceutical and Biologics
with the cultures of medical devices.
Once more is chemistry and biology
and the other is more engineering and material science.
Totally different cultures. Totally different way of looking at risk.
Totally different time horizon.
So, this is not an easy thing to do. Unlike the long term potential,
there are huge implications of technological convergence
for both companies and countries
and sort of focusing on a single technology or a cluster of firms
making a single technology.
We are going need to be focusing on related diversification
with companies that make multiple complementary products
which maybe combined in what are known as health cities into technology parks
having multiple technology platforms
where the research will be multidisciplinary development will be cross boundary.
The partnerships will be more industry academia in nature
and where the clusters of firms are making complementary technology.
Thank you.