From the March 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“You can think of this as sort of a Swiss Army Knife,” says Jansen “We’ve now got a bunch of different tools in our toolbox.”
Smart prosthetics
Jansen is also a professor of biomedical engineering and neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. His research focuses on biomedical optical research for novel prosthetic limbs using fiber optic nerve devices. Scientists and engineers are shining tiny laser pulses on neural cells in the brain in order to relay signals about pressure and other important aspects of touch and motor control to the prosthetics in an effort to mimic natural sensory feedback. These new prosthetics will allow a greater range of motor function, including the ability to gently grasp and hold fragile objects without crushing them. Funding for this research is coming from the Department of Defense.
“There are a large number of folks coming back from the Middle East with missing limbs,” says Jansen. “These people are in their early twenties and they have a long life ahead of them. We want to restore function for these patients.”
Laser sales improving slowly
Cosmetic lasers are the real money-makers in the industry and the six big manufacturers in the game are Palomar, Syneron, Cynosure, Cutera, Lumenis and Sciton. There was fallout during the recession and many small aesthetic operations that purchased some $80,000 to $200,000 cosmetic lasers could not make payments — many medi-spas closed shop entirely. As a result, used lasers flooded the market and drove down prices.
Some reports indicate that from 2008 to 2009 the industry saw approximately a 30 percent drop in global laser sales. Robert Ruck, global vice president of worldwide marketing for Sciton, says those numbers flattened out and started heading back up in 2010.
“I suspect high single-digit growth somewhere around the 7, 8 or 9 percent range,” says Ruck. “This is primarily due to international markets reporting strong growth.”
That is especially the case in China and throughout the European Union and in places like Australia and Brazil, where sales have rebounded pretty strongly, says Ruck, but this is so far not the case in the U.S. market. American sales remain flat, at best.
There may finally be some loosening up on financing for new lasers where previously there was a big cinch, and now more practices look like they are getting back into the business of buying. Some challenges are expected for existing laser manufacturers as new competitors emerge and attempt to carve out their niche in the industry.
