The alternative medicine industry: biology and business growth

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.

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).

Some contrary opinions towards the surfacing interest of alternative medicine rise from the fact that those remedies are sold freely in the market without official warnings that some remedies does not only heal, but also cause fatal effects when someone overdoses on them. People tend to consume such medicine without certain awareness and without informing their physicians (Angell, 1999).

A commonly elapsed responsibility of the industry is the publicity factor. It is necessary that the industry develop the marketing and promotion concept carefully so that it does not only focus on introducing the products to public and attracting their attention to buy, but also educating the community with the correct information about what they consume. Many people, even the well-educated ones do not find the right information about natural health remedies, or simply do not have time to find one, and hold on the perception that "natural product is always better than the factory-manufactured ones."

Overall, the best managerial approach to employ on an industry like this is a system that implicates proportional collaboration among the key players: researchers, industrial representatives, the government, public organization, and academic institutions. Each of them can provide related information and share their knowledge and expertise to work in a collaboration project, so that the output of the researches will not only improve the economy condition, but also the quality of life of the community.