Apr23
Posted on Apr 23 by Jeremy Kooyman
The NYTimes published an article recently talking about how to get safer medical devices. It raises some good points but I think it ultimately misses the mark. According to a report from the Brookings Institute, medical devices in the United States are responsible for over 3,000 deaths per year. The CDC more or less corroborates this – Table 10 lists complications of medical and surgical care at 2,768 people/year. To put these numbers in context, the CDC report also lists deaths from motor vehicle accidents at 35,369 people/year and all firearms deaths at 33,636 people/year, which means this article is off to a depressing start. So, morbidly relatively speaking, these numbers are low compared with already highly regulated industries. However, people associated with the NHS (which treats a fraction of the patients compared to the US healthcare system, roughly 156 Million vs. 1.2 Billion) are claiming that there are more than 10,000 deaths per year due to “problems in care”, so right off the bat there’s potentially an order of magnitude discrepancy (yes, I know we’d need to unpack the inclusion criteria behind...
Mar07
Posted on Mar 7 by Jeremy Kooyman
I wrote a piece for my employer hyping our attendance at Pharmapack and discussed how a recent cold medicine recall was an example of a Pharmaceutical company not engaging with their market outside of their core competencies. I want to expand on it to capitalize on a trending mental model in the Tech Sector called the “Stack Fallacy”, a mechanism by which small, nimble companies are disrupting longstanding incumbents. If you don’t feel like reading the article, just bear in mind that recently there was a voluntary recall of children’s cold medicine due to an incorrect dosing cup being copackaged with the syrup. If you’re not familiar with the term Stack Fallacy, I highly recommend Chris Mims’ piece in the WSJ. He interviews Anshu Sharma, the Silicon Valley VC who coined the term and uses it to explain what The Innovator’s Dilemma couldn’t – Why companies fall prey to more nimble competitors. Mr Sharma explains that the Stack Fallacy “…is the mistaken belief that it is trivial to build the layer above yours,” Companies can move up and down the stack,...
Feb27
Posted on Feb 27 by Jeremy Kooyman
I know what you’re thinking – Coffee has nothing to do with medical devices and another article about engineering and coffee is not going to contribute anything that hasn’t already been said. I get you. Hear me out though. I used to drink the warm brown liquid that came out of my employer’s drip machines when I first joined the company. I lasted…. maybe 8 weeks before I realised that I had enough self-respect that I’d revert back to using an aeropress and hand grinding. During this time I also attempted to form strong opinions about tea, since I am in Britain, but aside from developing the ability to pluck a steeping teabag out of a mug with my fingers I still prefer coffee. On a daily basis I would weigh 17 grams of beans, grind them to a medium-fine coarseness, place them into an aeropress, top it up with 250mL of water (just off the boil), steep for 2 minutes after agitating the slurry, then plunge. This would subject me to endless scrutiny for reasons beyond my comprehension....
