Industry's Top New Year's Resolutions

As the medical device industry faces big changes in the next year, the folks over at MedCity News are offering the top five New Year resolutions to prepare for 2013 and beyond:

1) Stop Whining about Comparative Effective and Embrace It
“Medical device companies hate comparative effectiveness for obvious reasons: never having been asked to demonstrate economic value, they have asked who is going to pay for it.”

2) Be More Aggressive about International Markets
“Savvy device companies need to recognize that there are all kind of opportunities abroad – not just in the usual BRIC countries but all over the world. That includes Japan, the country that is second to the U.S. in terms of medical device consumption.”

3) Innovate for Local Market
“The biggest challenge is that products meant for the U.S. market are not profitable elsewhere. That means those markets require medical device firms to be innovative about their product mix. The old, tired way of selling older models of current first-world products, will just not do.”

4) Hire Medical Economists
“Currently device firms have no talent within their organizations that can help them understand what is the true value of their products.

They need to hire medical economists who can crunch the numbers and do a deep dive into outcomes."

5) Engage Patients to Build Better Products
“Let’s face it. Medical device manufacturers are not good at interacting with patients. Physicians have always been the customer and they get all the attention.”