Tang's Strategic Moves for Olympus

Jan 06, 03:53 AM

Stephen Tang Professional

Group VR Life Science, Olympus America, April 2006.

President, CEO, and Director, Millennium Cell,VP, Managins Director, Healthcare, A.T. Kearney; VP, co-Managing Director, Cap Gemini; and Assistant Director, Senior Research Engineer, Lehigh University Center for Molecular Bioscience and Biotechnology.

Education

MBA for Executives, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania; MS, PhD, Chemical Engineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA; BS, Chemistry, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA.

Personal

Enjoys coaching youth soccer, baseball, and Softball teams,reading biographies,- bicycling; and playing golf.

Serves on Lehigh University's Engineering Advisory Board, and his parish's finance council.

New group forms. Personalized medicine and translational research exist on the cusp, where pioneering research breakthroughs meet individual clinical applications. Only we offer both precision microscope-based optical imaging for science and high-throughput, high-reliability instruments for in vitro diagnostics, benefiting both our research and clinical customers. Our Life Science Group combines three business areas - scientific equipment, diagnostic systems, and bio-business development. These areas operate independently, but work together wherever it makes sense for our business, our customers, or society in general. Also, we cultivate a heightened awareness of collaboration opportunities with colleagues in Olympus' endoscopy and consumer-products businesses. We believe the Life Science Group represents one of the highest potential areas of future growth for the corporation worldwide.

Revolutionary solutions' effects. Personalized medicine uses new methods of analysis to better manage an individual's disease or predisposition toward one. It aims to optimize medical outcomes by helping physicians and patients choose approaches likely to work best in the context of a patient's genetic, environmental, and behavioral profile. These approaches, such as genetic-screening programs, can diagnose diseases or help physicians select medication type and dose best suited to a certain group of patients. Personalized medicine hopes to use these variations in patients and in the molecular underpinnings of disease itself to develop new treatments and identify sub-groups of patients for whom they will work best. Thus, it has potentially profound benefits in improving the standard of healthcare in the United States and around the world.

Mergers bring new opportunities. Through our acquisition of Bacus Laboratories, with its specialty of virtual-slide technology and microscope software for clinical-lab applications, we now offer the first comprehensive, one-stop solution for labs seeking a complete virtual-microscope slide system; laboratory telemedicine is also on the horizon. Virtual-slide systems will allow review of pathology specimens without handling traditional glass slides; telemedicine will allow professionals to share microscope images over the Internet for long-distance consultation. Electronic medical records are another area where Internet technology will have a transformational effect on lab workflow, as will extended Internet services in the chemistry lab. Our advanced program of Web-based services can meet the needs of lab professionals right at their instruments.

Tackling the automation/IT future. The medical-laboratory personnel shortage and the growing need for lab automation and IT will change the skills needed for success. Having been mentored myself, as well as serving as a mentor, throughout my career, I strongly believe the profession needs to develop and commission leaders who can meet these challenges through professional mentoring. Increasing computer literacy will help improve our ability to meet increasing demand, as we incorporate virtual-slide, telemedicine, enhanced automation, and other technologies in the lab. There is still much to do. We must increase our ability to respond to the rapidly rising demand for more tests, more kinds of tests, and more individualized, demanding tests. Getting ready for this will take much of our attention over the years to come.

Lab-career outlook. I have seen the vital importance and daily challenges of a lab career since my formative years. My mother helped found the University of Delaware med-tech program and was recognized in 1987 as one of 400 professional women who shaped the state's history. My late father and my wife both were inventors in different eras with the Dupont Company. My father was posthumously awarded NASA's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1982. My wife was a talented molecular biologist, some years later.

Through our "Olympus Fellows" program, we hire promising young college graduates, giving them helpful experience in healthcare- management and other fields. Healthcare business overall needs diversity to thrive. The fundamental premise of leadership development ought to align the goals of the organization with the individual. I have learned that minority leaders are natural agents of industry and professional transformation through our career experiences. Our company also sponsors CE opportunities for lab professionals and is very active in a variety of lab organizations.

Automation and other advances will transform healthcare, but pressure to "do more with less" continues to squeeze the field.

By Patrick Farrell, Associate Editor

Copyright Nelson Publishing Dec 2007

(c) 2007 Medical Laboratory Observer; MLO. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved. Tang's Strategic Moves for Olympus
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