The twin towers: invention and adoption

All of the sectors analyzed in this volume face the same dual challenge: the invention of new technology and assuring its long-term clinical adoption by customers. These challenges are neither easy nor inexpensive.

For many of the sectors, the technology and the underlying science have encountered the same phenomenon as technology development in other industrial fields – namely, convergence of many skills. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms – long accustomed to both random discovery and synthesis of bioactive chemicals or recombination of known active proteins – have added to their discovery strategies genomic and proteomic foundations for drug discovery. These new sciences are just the first steps in the long process of drug development wherein tools such as bioinformatics must be integrated. As companies in the sector pursue new avenues of discovery and development, and as the associated costs spiral ever upward, healthcare systems throughout the world seek to rationalize care and lower overall costs. The industry has two added burdens, therefore: (1) demonstrating the economic advantages of new drugs, thus giving rise to yet another new discipline, pharmacoeconomics; and (2) demonstrating the relative superiority of new drugs over rival products and therapies, thus giving rise to comparative clinical effectiveness.