ABSTRACT
To understand the participants in the implantable medical device ecosystem and how they each relate to the challenges in gaining knowledge on IMD affordability, quality and performance, we have to go back in time to the beginning of the previous decade, when we created an organization called SharedClarity. To the industry we as SharedClarity were originally seen as just another aggregator, in some respects like the many group purchasing organizations in the healthcare industry. The idea of exploring a business model like SharedClarity originated during a conversation that co-author Mark West had with Michael O'Boyle, a United Healthcare executive, who was a former chief financial officer and then chief operations officer COO at the Cleveland Clinic during Mark's tenure as Executive Director of Supply Chain Management. The concept that evolved was that the core work of SharedClarity would be centered around gaining valuable intelligence on how products performed.
