President and CEO of Health Connexions Inc., Dawn Van Dam, has a singular goal: to make medical devices as desirable to investors as the next Facebook. Or Google. Or whichever ungraspable hope tech investors hold for achieving the same juggernaut levels of profit these once-in-a-lifetime ideas promise. But Van Dam has a problem. Medtech isn’t sexy to investors. And she wants to change that.

Earlier this year, a former employee of the immensely successful car service app, Uber, was rumored to be considering a startup venture involving an Uber-like setup for the healthcare sector. The idea is that the new app would facilitate physician house calls and, possibly, delivery of medical products. While various pundits chimed in with their opinions on whether this was feasible or not, in March, Forbes magazine made the argument that the idea would never materialize. “Big, successful venture capitalists just aren’t interested in healthcare until it can demonstrate the unicorn-sized returns they’re now accustomed to,” the article read. Quoted was Google Co-founder Sergey Brin, who said, “Generally, health is just so heavily regulated. It’s just a painful business to be in. It’s just not necessarily how I want to spend my time.”

Van Dam has a lot to say about this. She responded to the Forbes article (read her comments here), but also took up the conversation with Medical Product Outsourcing.

“When you have an illness, or one of your family members is dying, and there’s no cure for it, all of your billions in the world, that you have in that moment, will not be able to buy the cure or give you the device you need or diagnose you properly, or whatever else it will take,” she told MPO, infuriated at the attitude that Medtech isn’t “worth it.” “You have to invest in the science early, or it’s just not going to be there when you need it to save you. If you do the math—if all the billionaires in the world spent $100 million on health care/life sciences/medtech/diagnostics, we’d probably see quantum, quantum changes in our quality of life from a healthcare perspective.”

Van Dam’s goal is to provide disruptive new ways to accelerate the adoption and commercialization of new science and technologies. A graduate of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and winner of the Brownlee Award for leadership, Van Dam has also been featured in “Women in the Lead,” a book published through the Richard Ivey School of Business. In her own words, her restless and enquiring mind cannot relax until new insights and scientific ideas are uncovered.

The company she leads, Boston, Mass.-based Health Connexions, exists to transform science into commercial success. Health Connexions helps clients in the life sciences, health care and consumer health sectors by leveraging its extensive network and uniquely developed collaborative model in consulting, market research, technology evaluations and marketing communications services. The company also provides strategic advisory services for capital raising to fund new innovations, new opportunities, and the growth of established organizations.

Van Dam gave her insight into the medical device industry and the directions in which Health Connexions is moving.

MPO: How would you describe the current state of the Medtech industry?

Van Dam: There are different categories in life sciences and healthcare, and some categories tend to get a lot of interest. They may be a little more sexy, so they get more investors. At the top of the food chain would be anything that has to do with IT (information technology), like health data, informatics, electronic health records, etc. Unfortunately I think medtech and diagnostics are at the bottom of the food chain. Having been in the pharmaceutical industry for 17 years, one of the things I learned very early is that unless you can quite clearly convince the world of the value of your product, you’re never going to cover your costs, let alone your R&D (research and development), or make a profit.

I’ve argued in a number of different situations before that the medtech, device and diagnostic industries need to get together as a whole and find a way to justify their value in the stream of healthcare offerings because, as industries, they just haven’t done as good a job as the other pieces have. And I don’t mean to just throw it back on the industry to fix it, but every individual organization needs to have a story about how they impact the greater good.

One place to start is the work of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. Congress, which now has this new initiative, a Path to 21st Century Cures. Congress is looking at all of the different areas of regulation and saying that all of our laws in these areas are antiquated. I don’t yet see anything specifically about medtech and devices—this could be an example of a way for companies to get involved and change the landscape. This goes back to a regulatory and legislative perspective, where the government needs to value these pieces of the healthcare sector, and needs to support their fast movement forward, without compromising safety.

MPO: What are your expectations on how the medical device industry will evolve in next decade?

Van Dam: If you look at something like the Gates Foundation, they’re trying to move a lot of money and solutions into the developing world. If you compare that to the space program, they do a lot of research, and that gets translated into everyday life. By taking the work the Gates Foundation is doing in the developing world, where cost has to be really low, and accessibility has to be high, they’re supporting something that could really help the industry in North America. For example, I went to a conference a couple of years ago. There was a technology coming out of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). It used something like the eyeglass that a jeweler uses, and it measured all the things you’re supposed to measure in the eye when you get eyeglasses. They could produce a tool that provides a comparable result to the machine in an ophthalmologist’s office – for a dollar. And, it can be used on patient after patient after patient. There is some fabulous stuff happening out there, and the funders, hospitals and other organizations need to get on board.

Maybe another area that will accelerate progress will be the changes in the United States in regards to reimbursement—like with hospital acquired conditions (HACs). If you come into the hospital without a pressure ulcer (bed sore), and you get an ulcer while you’re in the hospital, there’s no longer reimbursement for that [for the doctor/hospital]. There are new ways to get devices in there that probably weren’t there before. So this wouldn’t be “I’m going to fix the pressure ulcer and therefore get paid for fixing it”—rather, if your device prevents it, you’d probably get more acceptance. If companies could position their offerings to solve some of these issues which are coming up during these changing times, that will make them really successful—thinking outside of the box more is really important.

MPO: What do you see as the greatest challenge for your organization?

Van Dam: Our greatest challenge over the next 5-10 years—because I’m counting on it—is that I would love us to be the central clearing house for ideas. That may seem like too huge of an opportunity, but we are actually putting in the infrastructure to do that. We have a whole database of new technologies; we have a consortium of drug companies, device companies, diagnostic companies, etc. We’re trying to initiate new tools that will speed things along. For instance, in one of our sister companies we’re going to be announcing an initiative with the NIH (National Institutes of Health) to bring technology out of the NIH faster.

Part of my vision is to make things more transparent, more shared. I’m not sure if crowd funding/crowd sourcing is the exact way we’ll fund new technologies, but if we can take come of those concepts and crowd share the ideas, the success stories and the funding opportunities, and do a lot more of that, and celebrate that a lot more, maybe we will be funded as an industry, just like funders invest in the “next” Facebook and Google. It’s a shame that there’s not more money coming this way, because who needs another social media platform? I’m not sure we do. We definitely need more help in so many different areas in healthcare and life sciences.

MPO: Beyond funding, how do you foster innovation and/or truly creative research and development activities?

Van Dam: We try to work on a variety of things because you can cross-fertilize ideas better that way. We also try not to define ourselves too narrowly in the work that we do. Part of health is having a healthy brain and having a healthy disposition and positive outlook on life, so one of the things we’ve done as a related opportunity, is we’re working with a singer that has some songs about empowering youth. And you might say, “Why would you do that as a company that typically works in a different industry, instead?” Well, when you look at another industry, like the music industry, and you realize how they are doing what they’re doing today, how they are trying to deal with issues like people downloading music for free—how Taylor Swift is reinventing herself and why is she so rich if people aren’t buying her music, for example—if you look at different issues and try to bring them back to another industry, it helps you become more creative, and helps you realize there are models out there that maybe people aren’t pursuing, that you can pursue. Back to the music industry—you can change the world with a song. So why can’t we change the world with one idea and then spread that idea—maybe it’s the next medtech device. We have a database of 5 million people—we do press releases, social media, etc.—if we can start some viral sharing of information, that would be fabulous.

I was personally involved in two different projects that changed the government’s funding model in two different areas. One was around schizophrenia, and another was around funding for comprehensive primary care that included things like nutritionists, counselors, social workers—not just the general practitioner. I know first-hand the power of people getting together and pushing against the politicians. The bureaucrats do what they’re going to do because the politicians put policy in place, but politicians need to be voted in again. There’s a huge, huge power that we all have if we can gather ourselves together around particular causes. I would offer up to anyone to contact me and tell me what their issues are, and let’s get things going in the industry. It takes a lot of voices banging on the doors of politicians to get things changed, and sometimes the voices just aren’t loud enough. Those two initiatives I did were with real people—we didn’t have a single lobbyist involved and we changed things in a positive way, by getting more funding for the right medical interventions.

MPO: What is the best professional advice you have received?

Van Dam: I’d like to share what I would give as professional advice. The best skill you can have is to learn how to be a sales person. Everything we do in life is selling, and if we look at it from that perspective, “I want to change something in the world” is a selling question. Then you think about what buttons you need to push. Whether it’s having the world stop smoking, or having the government fund Medtech at a better level, it’s all about communicating and convincing people that our message is important enough to take action. I know people don’t like to think sales is what we need to be thinking about, but you are trying to convince people to do something all the time. Let’s convince the funders, the government and the people that without a strong Medtech foundation, we all will come up short. The goal is a healthier future for all.