The health care and biotechnology industries have been facing challenges that have led to their poor performances and failure. These challenges include layoff of large number of workers, making losses overtime, divestment of businesses, concentrated research finances, and move from drugs innovation to marketing and unions .The unsatisfactory performance of the health care and biotechnology industry emanates from the contradictory objectives of science of health care and the business of biotechnology. Some of these contradictions of biotechnology and business of biotechnology includes: science holds procedures sacred while business is result oriented. Science values candidness and sharing with related organizations carrying out similar or complementary activities, on the other hand secrecy is of paramount importance for competitiveness. Biotechnology demands rationality of its ideas, which means they should be subject to scrutiny while business demands usefulness, which is business ideas should be value adding in terms of profit (Pisano, 2006).
Market research on the location ensures that the business is located most proximately to the people projected to be served. Locational considerations ensure that the business will be more preferred by clients as compared to other businesses offering similar products and services. The location should also ensure that the operational costs incurred such as rent are minimal. It should also have room for expansion in the future where the business may decide to expand its operations (Moseley, 2009).
The numerous and dynamic changes in technology in the health care sector is the other major problem facing the industry. This unique challenge eats into a big chunk of revenues generated by a health care business. This is because the biotechnology businesses have to invest in research and development either directly or indirectly. Directly is by offering intensive training to the personnel so that they can conduct the research. Indirectly is by funding institutions of higher learning such as universities to conduct research on their behalf. The continuous research also results to fast changes in technology over time due to new and cost effective machinery and tools being discovered. This requires the firms to incur capital expenditure of replacing the existing machines which are expensive and most firms cannot afford. As a result, they opt to retain the outdated technology machines, which have substantial operational costs resulting to losses (Kavaler & Spiegel, 2003). Most biotechnology businesses fail to adequately market and promote their products and services. Marketing and promotion help the business market to their prospective clients what products and services they offer, their quality, and characteristics. It also helps in creating a good brand image for their products. The business should choose the most appropriate marketing and promotion channels that will meet the above objectives. Most health care businesses rarely market or promote their products and therefore fail to capture all the potential clients. This lowers revenues earned resulting to losses.
References
Kavaler, F., & Spiegel, A. D. (2003). Risk management in health care institutions. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
McLaughlin, C. P., & Kaluzny, A. D. (2006). Continuous quality improvement in health care (3rd ed.). Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett.
Moseley, G. B. (2009). Managing health care business strategy. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett.
Pisano, G. P. (2006). Science business: the promise, the reality, and the future of biotech. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press.
