"Get close to your customers. So close that you tell them what...

"Get close to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realise it themselves."

Steve Jobs

My friends,

Tiresias has written before about the process and hinderances of getting Optiscan’s Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy (CLE) which enables in vivo, real-time, digital, distributed, AI assisted histopathology into the Cancer screening Clinic and the Operating theatre. Quite early on Tiresias used the history of the introduction of antisepsis and anaesthesia into surgery as an analogy for introduction of new technology into medicine. You see, my friends, the medical market is different. It is well understood by the pharmaceutical companies and some medical suppliers. It is not understood at all by most and has certainly not been understood or penetrated by previous Optiscan managements. Just to remind his friends, antisepsis and anaesthesia are fundamental to modern medicine. Both were introduced in the 1840’s. Anaesthesia was universal within a year of introduction whereas anti-sepsis took about some 30 years to be grudgingly accepted by doctors and surgeons. Why was this thus and what can the new and, in Tiresias’s opinion, the only qualified management that Optiscan has had, take from this.

The main difference and the reason for thedifference was the convenience and the advantage to the surgeon and not so muchthe welfare of the patient. Anaesthesia allowed quicker easier surgery enablingthe surgeon to get through patients quickly and easily and operate on many morepatients, and naturally much more lucrative remuneration. Never forget thefilthy lucre when it comes to the beneficent doctors who are only doing surgeryfor the love of humanity. But surely Tiresias the results were also much betterwith anaesthesia. Tiresias has not seen any data, but with more patients beingoperated on, without antisepsis, and before antibiotics, Tiresias suspects thatit may well have resulted in many many more deaths. So why did antisepsis takeso long to be accepted. Contrary to anaesthesia, which made the surgeons workeasier and more lucrative, antisepsis was an impost, a hindrance, it slowedthem down. Patients’ benefit? Never mind that. Optiscan can definitely take alot from this and many similar stories from the history of medicine. Optiscan’snew management has the understanding and the wherewithal to get into themedical system. In Tiresias’s view, there are three fronts to address. Thefirst and obvious is the doctors and the surgeons themselves and this is thehardest. The second, the owners and administrators of hospitals, pathologyproviders and imaging clinics. These will only look at the money side, and moneyis all they will look at. Demonstrating gains in efficiency and increase inreturns and improvement in the bottom line will have them scrambling andforcing doctors onto the new technology. An additional incentive, particularlyto the pathology providers is reminding them of obsolescence of current techniques,and Kodak! The third are the patient groups. These should be open, and open tothe message and relatively easy to bring aboard. Their political and mediaaction will help Optiscan and breakdown the conservatism and resistance to the self-absorbedand self-interested Leviathan of the medical system. You see my friends, evenif a new technology has a great advantage to the patient, to most doctors it's animpost. They must learn something new and adjust their current practice.