Today's Topline - 5/21/20
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Source: MedTech Association
Good Thursday morning:
In What to Expect When a Coronavirus Vaccine Finally Arrives, Elena Conis, Michael McCoyd and Jessie A. Moravek of the University of California, Berkley, offer some sobering lessons from history of the and suggest that America’s experience with polio should temper our hopes for a quick and effective vaccine for COVID-19. They note “[t]he first effective polio vaccine followed decades of research and testing. Once fully tested, it was approved with record speed. Then there were life-threatening manufacturing problems. Distribution problems followed. Political fights broke out. After several years, enough Americans were vaccinated that cases plummeted — but they persisted in poor communities for over a decade. Polio’s full story should make us wary of promises that we will soon have the coronavirus under control with a vaccine.”
History is an invaluable tool for the bio/med industry. We must be mindful of the challenges we have faced in the past and apply these lessons to our current attempts to fight the global coronavirus pandemic.
Beginning next week, MedTech will launch Propelling New York Forward, a series of weekly conversations examining how we restart the state’s bio/med industry in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. These lively interactive and informative discussions will feature interviews with innovators and business, academic, and government leaders. This free series will air live at 2:00 pm each Thursday starting May 28 and recordings of past episodes will be available at MedTech.org. Our first five conversations are:
- Understanding the Testing Challenge - May 28, 2020
- Palani Palaniappan, Chief Innovation Officer at Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, joins us to discuss the role of testing in the fight against the coronavirus and the development of a COVID-19 antibody test.
- Risk Mitigation Strategies for COVID-19 - June 4, 2020
- We’re joined by Larry Gilroy, CEO of Gilroy Kernan & Gilroy, a MedTech Membership Advantage partner, to talk about steps you can and should be taking to adjust your business’s risk mitigation strategies.
- Moving from New York Pause to New York Forward - June 11, 2020
- Our guest is Matt Watson, Senior Vice President of Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology & Innovation, as we discuss New York’s efforts to support the bio/med and innovation ecospheres.
- Bringing Our Hospitals Back - June 18, 2020
- We talk with Robert Corona, CEO of Upstate University Hospital, about the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on hospital operations and what it means to resume normal operations.
- Reigniting the Academic Research Enterprise - June 25, 2020
- We talk with Venu Govindaraju, Vice President for Research and Economic Development at the University at Buffalo, about how research institutions are reopening their laboratories.
MedTech exists to deliver value to the bio/med industry and serve those on the front lines of healthcare advances. We rely on our members to make that possible. Please take a moment to join or renew your membership today. Renewing members can lock in last year’s rate through 2021. New members who join today will receive 3 free months on their membership year. Don’t wait. We need your support to continue the work we do.
As always, don’t hesitate to contact us with your specific questions and concerns. Regular updates can be found at our website, which is refreshed daily.