MUSINGS – “Firsts”
Tagline isn’t quite as eclectic as seems. It regularly clips stories about medical devices, telemedicine, robotics, molecular diagnostics and a few other categories, while intentionally ignoring drugs, health policy, social media, basic science, and most business news, which easily can be found elsewhere. Here, the focus is on technologies which, in one way or another, touch on patient individuality-molecular, cellular, physiological, psychological, and socio-economic.
Occasionally, stories appear that are “firsts” in doing what they do. From now on, Tagline will make special note of these “firsts.” While a first need not be a patent, it does imply the same criteria of being novel, useful and not obvious. But firsts usually have other features too. They stir promise and raise expectations, while being quite unpredictable. Their economic impact on healthcare cost usually is encouraging but vague. Experience tells us that innovation, more often than not, brings higher expenses, but if firsts had accurate cost projections, they would be dead on arrival more often than not. How, then, does a first become a “game changer?” Some may say that game changers create competitive advantages for a maker or a user-particularly firsts that advance market share in the margin-is-the-mission model of healthcare. That may be the case on down the road, but Tagline’s firsts are items that may be grouped under a heading of “patient discovery,” where multiple layers of individuality are the frontier for making health a more achievable goal.