Biology and business intersections and applications

Alternative Medicine: The Biology and Business Aspects

Alternative medicine industry is one of the latest business opportunities that show rapid progress in the current economy. This type of business becomes a new trend in the world of medicine and modern health care. Many of the medicines had probably been invented in the traditional health care customs, ages before modern medical management took place. Despite the reality, scientific institutions and pharmaceutical companies are now conducting studies and research to investigate the reliability of the medicines apart from public believes of the remedies' glory in ancient legends of their usages. A number of hospitals and health care centers also have applied alternative medicine treatments in some cases of their patients. It looks like there is a light for another industry opportunities in here. In this case, the biggest part of the business relies on how rapid the biological researches are conducted and the most prospective approaches from the industries to find which management strategies are the most suitable to develop this field into a well-established industry.

The fast growth is undeniable. Current public interest toward alternative medicine surprisingly had increased remarkably during the last decade. La Puma (1998) wrote, Americans had spent about $10.3 billion for alternative medicines in 1990, compared to $12.8 billion figure of what they spent for hospital related treatment. Not only becoming patients' concern, insurance companies also realized the rising needs of complementary therapies and the trust public gave to them. In the U.S., almost "40 insurers covered aspects of alternative medicine," in 1997 (La Puma, 1998). That coverage included visits to common traditional therapy practitioners like nutritional consultant, yoga instructor, chiropractor, acupuncturist, and stress management counselor. The insurers also developed "alternative medicine health plan."

Not only in the U.S., many Britons were also highly interested in alternative medicine. The Centre for Complementary Health Studies in the UK had conducted surveys, which revealed that there were more than 140 organizations established to coordinate about 50-000 practitioners in 30 alternative therapies in 1997 and 2000 (Mills, 2001).

The Bright Future of The Industry

Breakthroughs in biological researches are the keys to the future of this business. There are actually a great deal of unexplored herbs and natural remedy concoctions from all over the world. The former generations mostly passed them through their descendants what they take from the nature without having any idea what exactly the potentials that lie within the formula.

As what conventional medicine industry has been doing with modern pharmaceutical researches before, the complementary medicine industry need strong backups from research companies, mainly the large-scale biological research corporations. There is a vast range of unfamiliar subjects that the prospective sponsors need to explore. If those benefactor companies aim to gain serious goals in the future, they need to make comprehensive plan and start the project immediately.

It would be a complicated process. La Puma (1998) stated, they need to explore, from both scientific and commercial aspects, which materials they would concentrate on, how they can develop them into promising services, in "clinical result and financial return." The projects also need to assess the related physicians and practitioner, to work at their best, to accommodate the most wanted health remedies in the medical issues.

Synchronizing the Business and Biological Future Concepts

The re-emergence of alternative medicine recalls its ancient success that took place centuries ago. At the same time, it is a comeback of biological approaches that have brought human closer to the nature, and had proven to human that the nature houses abundant resources that save their life.

In the past, biological researches came upon botanical identification and imprecise trial and errors through customs to reveal the remedial effect of such substance to particular symptoms of disease. There were no exact data about chemical composition and possible side effects recorded but simple scripts of herbal concoctions found in family journals.

With the new arrivals, the concept has to be slightly different. Modern people could not merely rely on the prescription given by alternative therapist without further investigation about what the materials exactly contain and what certain effects they do cause to heal sickness, although perhaps the formula might have been working well for two centuries. There are industrial standard and safety protection regulation to meet. This is exactly what the business players need to notify the industry.

The business is inseparable from the advancement of biology as knowledge, both in the past and in the future. In the past, business people made great profit from the herbal plantation establishment, discoveries of new medicines upon health care performances, and not to mention, the increasing numbers of trained herbal consultants by ages. Current businesses have another opportunities ahead, as armed with the practical knowledge inheritance from the earlier health remedy archives, they have preliminary informal studies to discover what contained in the botanical materials, and bring the direction for the industry.

There is a requirement for a strong relation between business strategies and biology as a part of science. Angell (1999) encouraged that current chemical and pharmacological methods would be able to "identify and purify the active ingredients in botanicals," for further study. She said, "Once the chemistry was understood, it was possible to synthesize related molecules with more desirable properties." She gave example of penicillin isolation from Penicillium mold, which turned out triumphantly to cure millions of people in communities that formerly lost their people from wound infection and pus.

In recent biology industries, the option does not stop to that. Scientists come out to discover that one chemical compound or substance may probably have multiple effects toward different forms of diseases. The industry has a broad range of possibilities where it wants to aim the research at. Scientist can predict the potential of chemical substance isolation from herbs and raw materials and point out what the substance can do to save lives upon variety if diseases.

However, such researches would be time consuming and prone to financial exhaustion. To cover the expenses, the promoter organizations need to incorporate the researches to the existing projects addressing specific health issue. It is not necessary that they explore the medicines without analyzing the most relevance result it can produce to solve urgent health problems.

Building Public-oriented Remedy Products

It is essentially ironical that upon the long time exposure to natural remedies, many alternative health care practitioners are allowed to sell their service without official license, even in major countries like England and the U.S. They rely only on restricted technical skills of the subjects from daily practices, and lack of medical qualifications or professional trainings (Mills, 2001).