Tag Archives: life sciences investing

Shakespeare’s play MacBeth opens with two witches uttering these words:

“When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

“When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won.”

The quote refers to the impending reunion of three sister witches intent on evil, but it struck me as a great metaphor for what the outcome of current efforts to reform healthcare must accomplish:  the re-connection of incentives, both clinical and financial, among the three most critical constituents of our healthcare system:  patients, payers and providers.  If these incentives do not align, or meet again soon, as a result of seismic shifts underway, the U.S. economy is probably doomed to collapse under the financial weight of our current healthcare system dysfunction.

In fact, MacBeth felt like a completely appropriate metaphor to me as I contemplated what is going on within the medical device industry while I attended last weeks’ IBF MedTech Investing conference.  The conference took place in Minneapolis, considered by many to be the ancestral homeland of much of today’s medical device industry.  Minneapolis is not exactly Scotland (witness complete lack of hills), but it … (read the rest)