According to Burns, almost all attention to healthcare has previously been focused on those who provide healthcare services and on those who pay for them. Burns and other contributors focus their attention on the producers of healthcare products. This book holds value to those directly involved in 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.” Burns and other contributors rigorously examine 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 that 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 yet a national public health program, all public officials would benefit from reading this book. Organizations that currently do business with, or are planning to business with, producers of healthcare products will benefit from the materials contained in this book. Some of the most interesting and most valuable material is provided in the last chapter, “Healthcare innovation across sectors: convergences and divergences,” which Burns co-authored with Stephen M. Sammut. It is highly advisable to read the seven chapters that 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.”
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