Lesson 6:The BioBusiness Revolution 1: Healthcare and the Biomedical Sciences: Past, Present, Future

This week's focus on BioBusiness Revoultion and the market we are looking for is the healthcare and the biomedical science. The quote of the week by our Dr Gurinder is

"The Biobusiness has the potential to will transform our lives and economies"


Dr Gurinder has categorized lives to 5 main categories; Health,energy source, food, clothes and others. In our world today, biobusiness plays an important role in our society today as it has already constitute over 25% of global GDP and it employs some 40% of the world's labor force. In addition, it may be our best hope for achieving sustainable development.

One interesting facts i have learnt during this session is that actually we share 99% genetic similarity with Chimpanzee and also 88% with mice and this fact actually encourage scientist to try out more bio products as they can obtain the results from mice for analysis before releasing the products to the market. Another interesting fact is that healthcare and biomedical science are the 2 revolutions covered side by side and the improvement of healthcare is largely due to the advancement of biomedical science. For instance, there's a device invented specifically to measure your sugar level and who knows that in the near future, daily measurement of your sugar level will be sent to the doctor and if it is not at the optimal level, the doctor will alert you and inform you to reduce your sugar intake. As the saying goes, prevention is better that cure and if we are able to detect this small little thing before it snowballs to a big problem, the chances of contracting certain disease can be minimized.

The presentation that attracted my attention is the Human Genome project and it involves the focus on the study of the DNA structure. It is good to know how our DNA functions so we can delve deeper into the structure, study on it and improve it. One key takeaway message for this lesson to take away is that as knowledge advances, we need to redefine our understanding of knowledge so it does not obsolete. With so many information created n changed everyday, it is essential to manage it properly so humans do not abuse it. Technology itself is neutral but when rights are given to humans. We tend to abuse it. The next interesting fact is how the market mechanism has played a big role in making some vaccines expensive. The cost of production maybe cheap but it is due to the interaction between the consumers' demands and supplier' supply of the goods that determine the equilibrium price. Just like the case of insurance that one of our peers has covered.

The question i think we can have more time to discussion on is the application of the results obtained from the human genome project. The main concern of the application of the project is ethical issues. Some people might feel that we are defying nature and change what god has created. So, how we can eradicate this issue is another discussion we can discuss and focus on if we had more time.

I would rate this week's lesson as 8/10 and i feel that the flow of the presentation and teaching is just right. not many of them exceed the time limit.I hope next week we will have a better understanding of the topic when prof starts part 2 of biobusiness!