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Successful innovations benefit industry, practices, patients
At the latest American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting, we saw a variety of new devices and drugs to excite us, challenge our current treatment regimens and leave us wondering who will pay for them.
In weighing the value of any new offering, I consider three stakeholders: the medical drug and device industry, the physician practice and, most importantly, the patient. Some technologies benefit all three, like presbyopia-correcting IOLs, for which industry charges a respectable markup for these high-tech lenses and physicians perform extra, compensated work to deliver good results to patients. Best of all, the patient forever benefits from greater spectacle independence. Everybody wins, and the market’s positive response to these technologies is no surprise.
In other examples, the value proposition is not so clear for all stakeholders. On their first release, femtosecond lasers for cataract surgeries had to prove their benefit to patients and to practitioners, while the medical device industry clearly benefited. As evidence of the benefits of these lasers to patients grows, so does their adoption.
The market speaks to every offering. To be sure, anytime a technology benefits just two of the three stakeholders, its commercial success will be challenged. Take, for example, conductive keratoplasty – a procedure that clearly benefited industry and doctors, but the refractive benefits to patients were only short-lived. While the procedure enjoyed temporary success, it eventually faded, giving way to procedures such as LASIK that have more permanent effects and benefits.
Sadly, some products we may never see, like more advanced drugs for treating fungal or Acanthamoeba keratitis. These rare conditions simply do not have a large market, and the regulatory pathway for drug companies is expensive and long. While both patients and physicians would benefit from such a drug, industry is very unlikely to make it happen.
As you reflect on the offerings of new technologies presented in the exhibit hall, think about how they serve all three stakeholders and which ones you think should and shouldn’t succeed. Almost always, success is predicated on fairly serving all three parties.