Health Care Industry Consultant Sees Bright Future For Michigan
A longtime Detroit-area business consulting firm has added a health care practice and hired a veteran of the industry to lead its efforts among pharmaceutical and medical device companies.
Fred Brown is now with Troy-based Ducker Worldwide with the title managing director.
A native of Rochester, Brown is a biochemist by education at Tufts University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard Business School. He was involved in the discovery of nearly a dozen drugs and several vaccines during his medical career. Then he turned to consulting, with Accenture and IBM, before working for pharma giant Roche in Europe.
Immediately prior to joining Ducker, Brown worked at Flint-based Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy, helping in the company's explosive growth and move to a former General Motors office building in Flint from suburban Swartz Creek.
"I think Michigan has a great future in this industry," Brown said of pharma and medical devices. "Michigan was No. 1 last year in venture capital funding for health care ... and we have lots of engineering talent and skill."
Since joining Ducker, Brown has helped a large foreign pharma firm looking to boost its presence in oncology drugs find a merger partner, helped hospitals analyze and improve their medical information networks, and helped various companies evaluate market opportunities overseas, among other assignments.
Brown said he believes the Affordable Care Act presents a great opportunity for medical device companies, because health monitoring is involved in cutting the cost of care, and cost-cutting is about to become more important than ever.
For the details on Brown's observations, check out this op-ed: www.mddionline.com/blog/devicetalk/op-ed-obamas-healthcare-act-win-medical-device-industry.
More about Ducker's health care practice at www.ducker.com/markets/healthcare.
