Product Description

Robert Lawton Burns focuses on the key role of the 'producers' as the main source of innovation in this wide-ranging analysis of business trends in the manufacturing branch of the health care industry. Written by industry academics and executives, the book provides a detailed overview of the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, genomics/proteomics, medical device and information technology sectors. Most importantly, it describes the growing convergence between these sectors and the need for executives in one sector to increasingly draw upon trends in the others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53425 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 398 pages

Review
"Never has the need for a reasoned analysis of the business of healthcare innovation been greater. The costs of innovation have been escalating steadily for decades and the willingness and ability of society to fund ongoing innovation is under strain. At the same time, as heathcare becomes increasingly complex those participating -- basic and discovery scientists, product developers, providers, and those involved in regulating, managing and funding the system -- become more specialized and find it harder to understand the industry as a whole. Yet the components of the system are not independent of one another and we ignore the inter-relationships at our peril. This badly needed volume will be a compelling read for those directly involved in healthcare, for students aspiring to enter the system, and for the rest of us who one way or another collde with the system more often than we might like."
-Dr. Peter A. Tollman, Vice President and Director of The Boston Consulting Group

"The health care sector of the developed world's economies has become one of the most significant in terms of both cost and human benefits created. The authors have done an excellent job of providing a clear understanding of the basic industry platforms that create both the product innovation and their associated benefits and costs. The book also provides valuable insights as to how the diverse segments converge to create the rapidly changing health care experience impacting both patients and payors."
-James Vincent, Chairman and CEO (ret.), Biogen

"All sectors of the healthcare products industry are not the same. The Business of Healthcare Innovation provides an interesting primer on the various product categoies while framing key questions regarding the future evolution of this fascinating industry."
-Arthur D. Collins, Jr. Chairman and CEO, Medtronic, Inc.

"This book presents a concise analysis of the factors influencing innovation in the heath supplier sector. It is highly recommended for programs in health services management and will also be of interest to health care executives seeking to obtain a deeper understanding of the supplier side of the industry."
-Stephen M. Shortell, Ph.D, Dean, School of Public Health, UC Berkely

"This book is an up-to-date and authoritative description of innovation in the healthcare industry. While there is substantial change in how healthcare services are delivered and reimbursed, the focus here is on innovaiton in products. This is appropriate as new pharmaceuticals and devices generate the greatest new benefit to patients and value to our economy. In addition to related subject matter, the book provides a comprehensive discussion about the biotechnology industry, in particular those companies devoted to the healthcare sector: their innovations, financing, development, evolution, and how they are regulated on a global basis....The profound impact biopharmaceuticals are having on serious diseases is effectively illustrated by cogent examples of breakthrough medicines and the companies that developed them. This book presents compelling evidence that the pharmaceutical industry, with its productivity gap, has become evermore dependent on the biotechnology industry as its engine of innovation for new products."
-L Patrick Gage, Ph.D., Venture Partner, Flagship Ventures

"This timely and well-written volume provides a needed analysis of the health care sector that delivers technological innovation. I am particularly impressed with both the breadth and depth of coverage that Lawton Burns and colleagues achieve here, given the expansive topic."
-Edward J. Zajac, Kellogg School of Management

"This is the ideal primer on both the science and the organizational issues affecting product development and market growth in these areas for any of the non-scientific actors involved in these processes."
-Mary L. Fennel, Department of Sociology, Brown University, Administrative Science Quarterly

Download Description
The Business of Healthcare Innovation is the first wide-ranging analysis of business trends in the manufacturing segment of the health care industry. In this leading edge volume, Professor Burns focuses on the key role of the 'producers' as the main source of innovation in health systems. Written by professors of the Wharton School and industry executives, this book provides a detailed overview of the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, genomics/proteomics, medical device and information technology sectors. It analyses the market structures of these sectors as well as the business models and corporate strategies of firms operating within them. Most importantly, the book describes the growing convergence between these sectors and the need for executives in one sector to increasingly draw upon trends in the others. It will be essential reading for students and researchers in the field of health management, and of great interest to strategy scholars, industry practitioners and management consultants.

About the Author
Lawton Burns is the James Joo-Jin Kim Professor, and Professor of Health Care Systems at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is also the Director of the Wharton Center for Health Management & Economics, and he sits on the Board of the Institute of Medicine (Health Services Section). He is author of The Health Care Value Chain (Jossey-Bass, 2002).

Customer Reviews

Good but could be better
An ambitious book (derived from a business school MBA course) that uses experts to deliver an overview of market structure/dynamics in Pharma, Biotheraputics, Medical Devices and Informatics. The material is generally interesting and reasonably well presented although the partiality of the authors is often a little too noticeable ('irrational exuberance' is probably the best way to describe the chapter on medical devices). There are also surprising omissions - medical imaging is dismissed in a short paragraph, WTO discussions on compulsory licensing non existent and the issue of reference pricing is mentioned but left unexplored.
The content is also beginning to show it's age (2003 imprint) and the data underlying some of the chapters is nearly a decade old.
That said it's a good overview particularly of pharma and remains readable and coherent throughout.

Worth reading for anyone working in the industry
The book provides a comprehensive look at the economics and rationale of product development, pricing and marketing in the healthcare market. Anyone who thinks that we (collectively) are being gouged by the medical device or pharmaceutical industry should take a look at the signficant costs incurred and capital risked by companies trying to innovate in that market.

While the approach taken in the book is largely academic, the information provided is easily understood by a general audience.

An Overdue Analysis of a Critically Important Subject

For all U.S. taxpayers and those who employ them, healthcare is one of the most important industries and yet, for most of taxpayers, it is probably the least understood. According to Burns, almost all attention has previously been focused on those who pay for and on who provide healthcare services. He explains that, in this book, he and other contributors focus their attention on the producers of healthcare products.

This book was primarily written for two different audiences: students and their teachers in graduate programs of health administration, and practitioners in each of several sectors (pharmaceutical, biotechnology, genomics and proteomics, medical device, and information technology) "not so much to educate them about their own sphere of activity, but rather to educate them about the other sectors that are increasingly interdependent with their own." The five industry sectors "are responsible for supplying a majority of the innovative products utilized by physicians and hospitals and which are increasingly demanded by consumers." As is later explained, "This supply and demand logic has exerted both positive and negative effects."

Of special interest to me is what Burns and other contributors have to say about innovative thinking and why it is not only important but indeed essential to the healthcare industry. (Much of the innovation is achieved in the information technology sector which Jeff F. Goldsmith examines in depth in Chapter 7.) Because the aforementioned five sectors are all for profit, Burns and associates examine the business models and corporate strategies of firms in those sectors. "As a result, the book may be more at home in health administration programs located in business schools [e.g. Wharton at which Burns is the James Joo-Jin Kim Professor, and Professor of Health Care Systems], but it may still be useful for programs in schools of public health and public administration." Given the rapidly increasing costs of healthcare, and especially given the fact that there is not as net a national public health program, my own opinion is that all public officials should read this book. I also highly recommend this book to all organizations which currently do business -- or are planning to business with -- producers of healthcare products.

Make no mistake about it: This is not an "easy read" but I hasten to add, that it rewards generously those who read it with appropriate care. Although healthcare students and their teachers comprise one of its primary audiences, this not so much a textbook as it is a rigorous analysis of urgent issues and significant crises which should also be of interest to senior-level executives of organizations which assume the substantial costs of coverage for those involved, for example, and to those in the news media who have -- until now -- devoted little (if any) attention to producers of healthcare products, other than to draw attention to their quarterly and annual financial data.

For me, the most interesting and most valuable material is provided with the last chapter, "Healthcare innovation across sectors: convergences and divergences," which Burns co-authored with Stephen M. Sammut. Obviously, it is highly advisable to read the seven chapters which precede it to derive full benefit from it. Burns and Sammut summarize the technological developments across all of the five segments (i.e. pharmaceutical, biotechnology, genomics and proteomics, medical device, and information technology) and suggest what can be learned about the business of innovation in healthcare. They carefully examine "various changes in market structure of each sector, the major business models used in each sector, the key success factors and distinctive capabilities of firms in each sector, the convergence between and among sectors, the formulation of value-adding alliances, and the managerial skills needed to sustain innovation and change in each sector."

Obviously, this is not a book for everyone but, now that I have read and then re-read it, I think The Business of Healthcare Innovation will be of substantial value to far more people than I originally assumed.

Bravo!