Last week I attended CIMIT’s 2008 Innovation Congress in Boston,
a meeting designed to encourage collaboration and innovation among clinicians
in academia, government, and industry.
Since Wednesday, the keynote address given by a Senior VP of Medicine and Technology at Medtronic, the world's largest medical device company, has stirred up a lot of controversy.
The speaker's thesis is that when biotech comes to fruition, the medical devices industry must adapt, converge, or become obsolete. He didn’t say that his company would participate in this convergence; rather, his speech was a call for innovation and forward thinking in the field of health sciences.
Some criticized the speaker for being “pessimistic” about the future of medical devices. As part of the audience, however, I found the comments in line with what I already know about Medtronic—and that is, Medtronic is incredibly dedicated to affecting the best patient care possible through its devices, collaboration, and philanthropy.
A few years ago, I worked on Laurel Chiten’s documentary film Twisted, which followed patients who were implanted with a Medtronic device that is used to treat dystonia and other neurological disorders.
Twisted was broadcast nationally on PBS in 2007, and it was not a blanket endorsement for one of Medtronic’s pet devices. The treatment provided by the Medtronic device was an overwhelming success for primary (early onset or genetic) dystonia, but less successful for secondary dystonia. Furthermore, Twisted elucidated the fact that there is a great deal about medicine and the human body that we don’t understand.
However, Medtronic went on to promote, screen, and provide further funding for the film.
Why? Because the film publicized a little known disorder that was tragically under diagnosed. And it informed patients and clinicians about the symptoms and treatments for those suffering from dystonia.
How often can we say that a company’s heart is in the right place? The Senior VP's comments show that leadership in Medtronic thinks critically about best quality patient care. Medtronic’s funding for controversial projects—like Twisted—demonstrates Medtronic’s dedication to informing the public, patients, and doctors about the forefront of medicine.
I do think that Medtronic is a fantastic company. And I also think that this controversy is a great example of the challenge facing industry and non-profit collaboration. Non-Profits are mission-based organizations that aspire toward an ideal—a better society, a more educated population, or the next game-changing discovery in health sciences. When industry is open to innovation within its own field, it recognizes that Non-Profits are designed for discovering the next step because they are not bound to the life span of a product; they are bound to realizing an ideal.
Non-Profit innovation reinforces the ideal for everyone. Even a Non-Profit working to further the biotech industry, which will eventually compete with medical devices, helps industry to understand how it must adapt for the future. And when industry and Non-Profits collaborate in creating that future, the best minds, research and funding converge. But does the public—and will investors and shareholders—see the value in industry and Non-Profit collaboration? I certainly hope so.
Change is scary. Welcome to it.
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