Healthcare Innovation: Changing the World— One Idea at a Time

BILL GATES SAID, “Never before in history has innovation offered the promise of so much to so many in so short a time.” How true! As we approach the end of the first decade of the new millennium, consider how many significant innovations have developed within the past 10 years alone: Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Skype have become normal aspects of everyday life for both individuals and businesses. You Tube has made everyone a producer. Cell phones continue to get smarter and more interactive as our fingers do the walking — digitally. In healthcare and pharmaceuticals, major innovations have taken place in the field of regenerative medicine, now being used to heal broken bones, burns and age-related illness, among other things. Robotic-assisted surgery is routinely employed to treat everything from infertility to prostate cancer. And in the area of vaccines, studies and trials suggest that vaccines for incurable diseases like HIV and breast cancer may soon become a reality.

The bottom line: Innovation has the power to change lives. This is why it remains one of my favorite topics. In this issue of BioSupply Trends Quarterly, we celebrate innovation in its many facets and forms.The new high-dose flu vaccine, for example, is an innovation that addresses an obvious need: protecting those 65 years of age and older from the deadly influenza virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people 65 and older account for about 90 percent of the deaths from flu-related causes each year. This new high-dose flu vaccine, then, has the potential to solve a long-standing problem by altering that trend and saving lives.

It would be difficult to discuss innovation in medicine without considering the impact of the Human Genome Project. Our cover feature, Personalized Medicine, looks at such innovative research as pharmacogenomics, a relatively new area of genetic study that focuses on tailoring drugs to an individual’s genetic makeup, utilizing gene therapy to diagnose and predict disease. Without doubt, this remarkably innovative field is poised to change the way medicine is developed and dispensed and how many diseases are treated.

Healthcare reform remains a topic on the forefront of everyone’s mind as we strive to improve a system that has been broken for a long time. Solutions are certainly not easy, nor easily agreed upon. This issue, in our Leadership Corner, Mike Alkire, president of Premier Purchasing Partners Inc., offers insights into the potential benefits of the new Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) that promise to reduce healthcare costs while simultaneously improving quality of care.

Another area of healthcare that begs a closer look is the topic of medical misdiagnosis. How can we innovate to better help practitioners? With all of the diagnostic tools available to modern medicine, misdiagnosis should be a rare occurrence, but, unfortunately, as we discuss in our article, it is not. The statistics give us a wake-up call that there is clearly a need for improvement. Our hope in highlighting this challenge is that innovation can play a role in improving systems and safeguards that protect patients from preventable errors.

It is an exciting time that we live in. Sometimes the pace is so fast that human error is unavoidable and communication is so rapid that misunderstandings occur. Yet miraculous, life-saving and life-preserving advancements are occurring at such a speed that we cannot help but be astounded. Now more than ever before, the question should not be “Why?” but rather “Why not?” As always, we hope you enjoy this issue of BioSupply Trends Quarterly.

Helping Healthcare Care,

Patrick M. Schmidt

Publisher