Swiss medtech cluster
Aggressively gobbling up market share around the world
Like Swiss chocolate, Swiss medtech is rapidly becoming a global brand unto its own. In just a few decades, Switzerland has bulled its way onto  the global medical technology market, using, an approach championed by Dr. Arthur Carty, Canada’s former national science and technology advisor and the former president of the National Research Council of Canada. Carty calls it “cluster” strategy. It essentially involves assessing the economic strengths and capabilities of a region and then bringing together “the resources and the people and the programs required to make it happen.” The Swiss appear to have mastered this approach rather well. <more>

The decline effect
Why are so many published findings false?
As the medical technology industry knows very well, before the effectiveness of a drug or device can be confirmed, it must be tested and tested again. Different scientists in different labs need to repeat the protocols and publish their results. The test of replicability, as it’s known, is the foundation of modern research. Replicability is how the scientific community polices itself. It’s a safeguard against subjectivity. But what if replicability itself is in question? <more>

FDA admits to "inconsistencies"
The preliminary report is quite revealing
Last week, the FDA’s Centre for Devices and Radiological Health issued its plans for the next steps in the revamp of its services but the report reveals inconsistencies which need to be looked at more closely. Those in the know will remember that the CDRH report was released back in August 2010, when its 510(k) Working Group listed more than 60 recommendations grouped aimed at improving the Center's effectiveness.  Finding 6 stands out because it exposes an issue of considerable importance but does so in typically obtuse language that may cause many to miss its significance. The actual wording of Finding 6 reads as follows: Variations in the expertise, experience and training of reviewers and managers may contribute to inconsistencies in the decision making. <more>

Canada’s funding chasm
The defining issue for many medtech companies
When trying to forecast what will be the upcoming trends for the medical technology industry, many questions come to mind. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much evaluation to come to the realization that all other hot button issues will likely continue to take a back seat to one critical issue in this country. For emerging private health and life sciences companies in Canada the defining has been and will continue to be access to capital. This issue is so prevalent that Industry Minister Tony Clement recently admitted “We don’t have a funding gap in Canada, we have a funding chasm.”<more>

Deadly prescription drugs
Trials done with “drug naïve” patients yield unreliable results
Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas—on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese—in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and “mistakes” can end up in pauper’s graves? The authors investigate the globalization of the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. Government’s failure to rein in a lethal profit machine. <more>

The brain cancer debate
Momentum is shifting on the issue of cellphone safetyS
Loyd Morgan, 68, a survivor of brain cancer and a retired electronics engineer and self-trained epidemiologist has made it his mission to spread the message that cellphone is carcinogenic. He does this more or less as a wireless communications vigilante, however. The American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the World Health Organization all regard the radio waves emitted from cellphones as safe. But another growing body of experts believes cellphone use can promote tumors, and momentum has been shifting to their side. A researcher in Sweden, for instance, recently reported that people who started using cellphones before the age of 20 have four to five times the odds of developing one type of brain tumor. An unpublished analysis by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute shows an increase in brain tumors among Americans in the under-30 age group. <more>

Hydrophilic coatings
Companies that market faulty products should be outedS
This blog goes out not so much to the customers seeking hydrophilic coatings (although they will benefit from reading this), but more to the companies that make them poorly and market them as something otherwise.  This is not a direct accusation aimed at any company in particular, but guilty parties will know who they are.  This is me calling you out. <more>

The annoying Australian
Another healthcare official is fired for asking the right questions
Twenty months, give or take:  that’s how long Stephen Duckett lasted as CEO of Alberta Health Services.  Media around the world have chronicled how his cookie crumbled.  The conventional line is that he was ultimately done in by his flippant encounter with a horde of reporters.  If you’ve watched the video clip, you already know this was a misdemeanour, not a job-ending felony.  If it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, what weakened the camel’s back to begin with?  What wore out the welcome mat so soon? <more>