Stimulating Our Regional Economy
The best way to know what’s happening inside a ragion is to see it from the outside.
For years, an argument has raged within Northeast Ohio’s economic development and investment circles over whether our region’s strengths in healthcare are simply a part of the local economy, or whether they also offer a chance to build out exportable industries. Some have argued we should focus on making healthcare and healthcare devices the centerpiece of any regional development strategy; others argue–glass half empty–that while we mave some of the top ranked hospitals in the world here, we are behind other regions when it comes to capitalizing upon opportunities in the device space.
So it gave me great pleasure this morning to pick up my copy of the Financial Times of London and read about a group of US doctors who performed pioneering surgery recently that might give head injury victims new hope:
“Doctors in the US have transformed the life of a minimally conscious patient by implanting electrodes deep into his brain. The 38-year-old can eat, drink and communicate with his family for the first time since 1999 when a savage assault left him with severe brain injury.
“This first successful use of ‘deep brain stimulation’ or DBS to treat the effects of serious brain damage is published on Thursday in the journal Nature. It will offer thousands of families the hope that they may be able to communicate again with loved ones who have lived for many years as little more than human vegetables.
The operation was carried out at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in New Jersey. DBS is used to treat Parkinson’s and other neurological disorders, but had not been tried before on a patient with severe head injury.”
This is an amazing story, and you can read the rest of the FT’s coverage of it here.
And while the article doesn’t mention Intelect Medical by name, followers of TechFutures will recognize that company as one of last year’s NorTech Innovation Award winners for their pioneering work in Deep Brain Stimulation. Since Intelect was a spinout from the Cleveland Clinic (ably assisted by local economic development group BioEnterprise), the argument about whether or not this region can turn its healthcare expertise into a profitable, global device-based industry as well would seem to be moot. The story about the young man coming out of a minimally conscious state through a procedure performed at the Cleveland Clinic should be seen as a “wake up call” in more ways than one…