Wednesday, May 1, 2013

The USA is failing to Produce Innovative Medical Devices


The United States Of America has always prided itself for being on the cutting edge of innovation and technological know-how. We have come a long way from the civil war, and pride ourselves on being the society that provides the most desirable health care world-wide. Although conditions are changing. Due to suppressing legislation, and expanded taxes on Medical Devices, most entrepreneurs can not acquire the funding they need to develop their products.

To start with the rules and regulations were integrated one by one in an effort to make sure any new medical devices that went out to market were suitable for the end customers. This essentially follows the “first do no harm”. It is actually really great, and truly does make sense. And to be sure we do not have a lot of medical devices that are laminated with lead paint or the like. The word of caution is as each and every new procedure and regulation was included, it became increasingly more stressful to get any of these medical devices through the program, and to market-place.

It follows that if we now have a system in place that makes it so as any modern medical device must past numerous guidelines, medical tests, animal testing, and summary boards, that we can have the best and least risky products or services readily available on the free market. Unhappily this is obviously just not true. A large number of our most modern cutting edge medical devices are hardly making a showing in the United States since the exclusions, and the timeframe it takes to complete the reviews and legal guidelines mean it is an unreasonable and unprofitable gamble. One of the most rapid growing markets in India is new and innovative medical devices.

Investors and Opportunity Capitalists are the engine that sustains advanced technology. In this area of inventiveness, Silicon Valley is a sparkling demonstration of just what one can achieve whenever given the right resources. With venture capitalists advocating the brightest young brains in our modern world the breakthroughs that got their start in Silicon Valley are well recognized. Those marketers totally changed the face of the planet over the course of 2 whole decades.

Developments such as this are attainable in the medical field by producing some of the most innovative medical devices in our history. The difference is that unlike Silicon Valley, Investors and Venture Capitalists have even started to see investing in medical devices as an unsuitable investment. The amount of time it takes to see profit is substantially all that long. And the likelihood that the project will get stamped out by a principle or specifications is becoming increasingly more unreasonable as the years go on.

A loss in new and innovative medical devices has been a year to year occurrence. Each of the last 24 months has experienced a 13% decline in medical devices. The new medical devices taxations have put a serious damper on the market as well. The taxes is not on profits, it is strictly based on revenue. This unjust technique is putting suffering businesses and organizations out of business.

Our innovators are forced to sell their devices to other markets. One developer created an iPhone app that can detect heart beats and diagnose arrhythmias from a smart phone device. Due to regulatory committees, the producer is now selling the App to veterinarians. The regulations are much leaner in the field of veterinary care. In this case our animals have a better chance at quality, innovative care than we do.

While it is frightening that we are forcing our best and brightest to take care of our animals, the worse news is that most new innovative medical devices are going directly to India. We are robbing Peter to pay Paul, and drowning in a sea of red tape and bureaucracy.