CINCINNATI, Ohio –Â Some people see the limitations that are likely to be imposed through the nation’s health care reform efforts, but Carol Frankenstein sees only opportunities.
The president of BIOSTART, the life science company developer in Cincinnati, appointed her organization’s first health care executive-in-residence four weeks ago. “With health care reform, everybody recognizes there will be tremendous opportunities there,” Frankenstein said.
BIOSTART was launched in 1998 by Cincinnati industry leaders such as Procter and Gamble Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon medical device business that wanted to put to use technologies they developed but didn’t want to commercialize, Frankenstein said.
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With the formation of BIOSTART, those technologies can be spun out as new companies and nurtured in the BIOSTARTÂ incubator until they’re ready to graduate. “We’ve worked with over 125 companies … helped them raise over $150 million” over the years, said Frankenstein, who talked to MedCity News about the health care reform opportunities she sees.
Q. So what kinds of opportunities do you see ?
A. There are a couple of trends we’re going to see. One is a transition of services out of the high-intensity, high-cost environment into the more customer-friendly, hopefully less-costly, environment.
Q. Could you give an example of what that transition might look like?
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A. Urgent care was one of the early examples of that. Once part of most hospitals’ emergency departments, urgent care centers have sprung up outside of hospitals in many communities. Now, I see the next generation of what I call “docs in a box” — retail clinics. They’re not trying to put them in shopping malls anymore. The national drug and grocery store chains that have pharmacies are expanding their service offerings to routine kinds of care from flu shots to the treatment of strep throat.
Q. Would this transition also affect institutional caregivers?
A. Yes. Now, you’re seeing a burst in assisted living centers and home health care services. Technology is going to enable telemedicine, from monitoring people’s health status at home to transmitting medical images half-way around the world for diagnosis and reporting.
Q. What is the common focus among these transitions in health care?
A. The focus is going to be on reducing cost in the system. The short-term practice of that might be on rationing care, but that won’t last long. There’s going to be an uproar in this country, if that happens. It’s going to have to be a long-term focus on innovations, not only in technology but in service delivery, where it’s delivered and by whom. We’ll use our most highly trained providers for the toughest cases. I see that happening every day, so I think we’re well on the road to that.
Q. So, how do we get to the next opportunities?
A. If we can get health care to function like all our other capitalist markets do — we say that, and we laugh — there are going to be tremendous opportunities. And I’m very encouraged by the things I’m seeing from entrepreneurs who are coming to us. They are thinking about very specific niches where they can fill a role and make a difference, integrating what’s already in hospitals or already in physicians’ offices. It’s very exciting to see.
