He needs to sell his product in a different country. If the system is broken here, he should go elsewhere and see if he can make a change.
How the medical supply industry blocks device startups from selling to hospitals
131–140 of 157 posts
Re: How the medical supply industry blocks device startups from selling to hospitals
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the reason many entrepreneurs are building social networks is because many of those entrepreneurs don't have the technical chops to cure cancer or to solve more difficult problems. Solving difficult problems often requires either deep domain knowledge or solid technical expertise in areas more challenging than web/phone app development. There's a much higher barrier to entry. Mind you there's a fair number of ent…
People choose what to focus on based in part on the expected benefits. I was very interested in biology in high school. Part of the reason that I ended up working with computers instead is that the feedback is much faster (compile and run) and the leverage much greater (e.g. Bill Gates got rich with a software company, not a life sciences company). Needless to say, I don't regret choosing software over biology.
I agree that software solutions can be leveraged for more financial success than (say) hardware solutions. I also decided to switch focus (at least temporarily) from what would have been a medical devices startup to software for that reason, among others.
But I think an entrepreneur's skill set is more of a limiting factor in the type of startup he/she can decide to pursue. After all there are problems that are potentially more lucrative than social networks but if you don't have the domain expertise or technical knowledge to solve those problems you may not even know they exist and if you did, would not be able to solve them.
There's a more extensive discussion on this here: http://swombat.com/2012/1/19/idea-reach-cofounder-myth
Re: How the medical supply industry blocks device startups from selling to hospitals
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, cancer definitely isn't the "low hanging fruit". Hospital errors and infections would be much easier to address, though as this article shows, even that is nearly impossible.
Fighting cancer is a $200B+ industry. It's not cured yet because 1 million people would suddenly be unemployed.
Whenever I hear people say stuff like this I there is a huge part of me that wants to say: Science and magic are not the same thing, just because you can describe something does not mean you can actually do it. I realize it's not productive, but people seem to confuse sci-fi physics and medicine with actual physics and medicine.
The simplest explanation I have come up with goes something like this. Cancer is you, the only thing that cancer describes is the breakdown of the billion year contract that enabled Multicellular organism to exist in the first place. There is no single way to tell cancer from non cancer and just as importantly almost cancer cells from normal healthy cells. You can literally have 2 different cancers at the same time that are closer to you genetically than each other. Out of something like 10^(10^10) viable forms of cancer, a few themes are vastly more common, but the edge cases are effectively endless.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/personalized-m...
PS: A billion years from now we might not find a way to travel faster than light because it might not be possible. It might not seem like it, but I am not convinced it's possible cure all possible forms of cancer in a human body. However, people with cancer are serving far longer after all this research than they where 40 years ago and continuing down this path hopefully we can transform cancer from one of the more common and nasty ways to die to something as rare as lighting strikes.
Re: How the medical supply industry blocks device startups from selling to hospitals
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
People like to pretend like all government regulation is stifling to innovation, but it is pretty clear that some regulation is necessary for a properly functioning market. The trick is, how much is too much. There needs to be a very good reason to shield any company from anti-trust regulations and I can't think of a valid one that would apply to medical supply companies.
I think that saying that regulation is necessary (as opposed to desirable) might be too strong. In most cases things can still function without regulation, because people know things aren't regulated and can take that into account by being cautious. Now, this is often inefficient and causes some number of people to get screwed over, but it still works. I'm sure there could exist some golden system of regulation for h…
"Saying that regulation is necessary might be too strong"?
Some regulation is always necessary. How would you expect contracts to work without contract law (i.e. regulations governing how contracts are to be interpreted, enforced, disputes about them are to be resolved, etc.)?
It is very clear to me that our current system manages to be better than no regulation at all (even though it is arguably worse than the ideal quantity and quality of regulation). To my knowledge, the only places with no regulation are places like Somalia, where the guy who has the largest number of the fiercest relatives and friends with guns gets to decide what the people around them should do.
Re: How the medical supply industry blocks device startups from selling to hospitals
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The article in question highlights something that we should all understand very well at this point: Government rule-making is, more often than not, fraught with unintended consequences that, ultimately, end-up costing us in terms of money, freedom and choice. This is how I see it: 1. Government makes an anti-kickback rule. 2. It relaxes the rule. 3. Corporations take advantage of the opportunity using kickbacks to…
> 4. Your conclusion: government rule making is bad. Feel free to provide 3 examples where there's significant regulation AND little/no regulatory capture.
1. Laws against murder.
2. Laws against theft.
3. Contract law.
4. Traffic laws (right of way, behavior at stop signs and traffic lights, etc.).
None of the above are perfect; all of the above have been used abusively at times; all of the above are needed to some degree for the smooth functioning of society. There are some debates in the area of traffic regulations about whether some situations would be safer with a little less regulation. There's also been some regulatory capture of contract law by lawyers, but because contract law is relatively symmetric, it's less of a problem there.
Re: How the medical supply industry blocks device startups from selling to hospitals
#136As an entrepreneur I have dedicated most of the last 25 years to doing hardware (read: manufacturing) ventures. Manufacturing in the US is hard, if not impossible, save cases where the ecosystem or nature of the market can support it. Problems one could face include: ip (patents) mine field, government regulations, liability issues, lack of localized supply chains, high labor costs, high insurance costs, high taxes a…
I think that one of the biggest advantages with software, is that you have access to the best distribution network, the internet, immediately. With hardware, and physical products in general, there's many hurdles (ie manufacturing, regulatory, shipping) to overcome before you can reach an end user. Furthermore, iteration is much, much slower with a physical product.
I think that that is one of the reasons we're seeing such a huge shift to the virtual world. Problems that used to be physical are gradually becoming software problems. A great example is how media is starting to largely be distributed through online channels, ie iTunes, or what Amazon is doing to retail. I recently started http://www.AudioNotch.com, a site that provides tinnitus therapy through online music. Before the proliferation of mp3 players, this problem would have had physical elements, I would have to mail CDs with the audio therapy for example, and users wouldn't be able to change their music easily. But now, due to pre-existing technology, I can do everything virtually. Unfortunately, it looks like the medical devices industry will be one of the last to make this change.
Re: How the medical supply industry blocks device startups from selling to hospitals
#137After spending way too much time on this thread here's my parting thought: Some choose to believe that corporate greed is the cause of issues such as that highlighted by this article. Others believe that the political and legal system in place has flaws that create the conditions necessary for such things to happen. And some are in between these two schools of though. Here's the kicker: While we live within and with…
I don't know. If decentralisation of control, increased use of bottom up feedback, and less corruption to increase the innovation cycle is really the way forward, I don't feel that the current Chinese model of government has any significant advantages
Currently they rely on the rest of the world to find the best designs and practices, then cherry pick the good parts and make the whole thing efficient with centralised control. For them to pull -ahead- permanently they need to start fostering their own innovation. Capitalism and transparency have been shown as the best way so far to achieve this
Re: How the medical supply industry blocks device startups from selling to hospitals
#138I hope Amazon casts its all-powerful crappy-legacy-vendor-destroying eye upon the medical supply market soon. All the value-add GPOs offer (other than pricing) is stuff Amazon could easily do for free -- inventory tracking, etc. It's all IT, and basically zero marginal cost. As long as existing GPOs can't legally prevent a hospital from also using the Amazon GPO, I don't see how anyone could stand against Amazon. Ama…
"casts its all-powerful crappy-legacy-vendor-destroying eye"
The most memorable phrase I've heard all week.
Re: How the medical supply industry blocks device startups from selling to hospitals
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
You keep repeating the same thing (politicians are the the causing entities, corps. are the reacting entities) even in response to a challenge to rethink that assumption. That doesn't mean it's true. One can reasonably disagree with your simple-minded answers (imho). Notably wrt the third, fourth and fifth questions. Another possible answer is that corps. and bribers wanted a way to legally bribe politicians (to avoi…
Please don't call anyone simple-minded, particularly when you don't know them. Nobody is saying that politicians are the root cause. We elect them. Ultimately it is our fault for allowing it. Then some of these folks appoint people to other positions. The appointments are probably worst than the already-challenged elected official. When I hear someone carry the "corporate greed and corruption" flag I have a viscerall…
I said your answers were simple-minded. You certainly don't come across as being such. I'm sorry if I offended you.
Re: How the medical supply industry blocks device startups from selling to hospitals
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Your argument seems adrift from reality and increasingly resembles mere ranting." I really have to thank you for that. I appreciate personal comments of this kind in the middle of an otherwise civil discussion. I apologize for not agreeing with you and moving on. Thanks.
I haven't made any personal remarks about you. I've just observed that you've devoted more than 50% of your comment above to argument about irrelevant topics, and that those arguments rest on inaccurate assumptions, such as the inevitable expansion of government.
Actually, it sound like he's agreeing with you. Be gracious and accept that. Good job.