The minimally invasive surgery market, and associated Danish ...

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The minimally invasive surgery market,
and associated Danish opportunities
in e.g. Germany 7 . Whereas on the income side fewer people are left to fund the publicly financed social-
and healthcare systems. The macroeconomists label this “the challenge of the inverted demographic
pyramid” as visualized in illustration 3. This in turn leaves the “Old World” with three main options if the
level of publicly funded healthcare is to be maintained:
a) Do more with less:
The explanation lies in the heading. This option means year-on-year increases in public sector
healthcare output combined with decreasing real budgets – not a cocktail likely to go down well with
healthcare systems and citizens alike.
b) Increase factor input or factor output:
Create a biotope for new jobs creation, preferably in the private sector. This will affect the income side
of the equation positively as more private sector employment will help fund the publicly financed
systems via corporate and personal taxes. This will naturally not just benefit the healthcare system, but
the entire economy in nations that are successful in navigating this path.
or
By replacing tasks that in today’s healthcare systems are carried out by humans with robots. This will
potentially have a positive effect on the cost side of the healthcare system equation i.e. increase factor
output significantly. Anecdotal evidence of such a model comes from Japan, where nurses have been
relieved from feeding patients as this is handled by machines/robots, and overseen by a nurse 8 .
c) Privatize:
Finally the countries “diagnosed” with an inverted demographic pyramid will have to privatize large
parts of their healthcare systems to achieve the much sought after efficiencies through an absolute
advantage selection process.
So which is it going to be?
Well, though the way nations are likely to deal with the challenge of the inverted demographic pyramid
in the decades to come, will include measures from all three options described above, the specific mix
of the above measures is difficult to estimate precisely.
The only thing we know with a high degree of certainty is that the “do more with less strategy” will be
central to all developed countries' healthcare systems going forward, as this is the option that for
politicians and hospital executives demands the least amount of effort and creativity to dictate
implemented.
4.1.2 Reduced price willingness:
We believe that in an environment where the “do more with less strategy” dominates the scenery, the
main challenge facing existing device companies will be what we refer to as price willingness. Price
willingness is a measure for how much a surgeon or purchaser is willing to pay for the combination of
device capability and perceived device innovation.
The first sign surgical device companies come across when encountering the “do more with less
strategy”, is the shift in power from surgeon to purchaser. Though the surgeon still has influence her/his
power is significantly diluted, as the surgeon now has to justify her/his preference in terms of clinical
7 OECD, Statistics Directory extract and aquilo analysis.
8 Institut for Fremtidsforskning, Copenhagen, Denmark