Finding your Kilimanjaro…

On the 5th of November 2016 I will attempt to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak of Africa, with an altitude of 5895 meters above sea level. I hope to plant a flag on the roof of Africa for one of my diabetes projects on World Diabetes Day, on the 14th November.

Climbing the Kilimanjaro will be for me a personal challenge, another turning point in my life. At the age of 50 I need to re-evaluate an industry that knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. Yes, I am referring to the medical device industry… I have for 25 years been working in an industry that looks at my finger when I show it the moon.

Moving from Egosystem to Ecosystem

For a while I have been concerned that my industry has been more concerned about artificial media presence than with medicine. Indeed we are suffering from a complete “gadgetization” of our industry, ever since crowd-funding (Kickstarter, Indiegogo) has allowed the layman, the non-professional, to launch a product simply because he believed in it, rather than based on sound, scientific research.

And the same “gadgetization” also applies to social media. Anyone can be an expert in medicine or in “connected health” nowadays. Ever since connected health has become the new Nirvana for business, an entire new generation or “digital experts” has invaded the media industry and has positioned itself as the be-all and end-all of communication in the field. But they in fact know very little… They are not medical experts… They are not even technology experts… they are not doctors… So the public is continuously fed with a deluge of nonsensical and uncoordinated media about a subject on which they should be given real, useful data.

The Osborne example

My late father was an early user of the Osborne computer. The Osborne, created in 1981, was one of the first truly portable computers. It was a little suitcase, with a little foldout lid that doubled up as a keyboard, and weighed a ton. I remember carrying them around the house as a teenager. My father was very proud of using the Osborne and of the Osborne’s incredible computational power. So proud in fact that he set out to prove, using the Osborne, that it was physically impossible for the human body to run 100 meters in under 10 seconds. To do so, he entered all the physiological data of the human body into the computer, launched the algorithms, and he did it… He demonstrated, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it was physically impossible for the human body to run 100 meters in under 10 seconds. It was there, in black on white, on the computer… This was 1981…

In May 1983, Carl Lewis ran, for the first time, 100 meters in less than 10 seconds at low altitude. And today, if you can’t run 100 meters in under 10 seconds, you might as well stay home; it has become the standard of the industry.

Countless such examples exist in various industries, from music, to sports, to technology.

When the future arrives, we must be careful to not let current dogma overweight our imagination and intelligence.

We need to see the truth… We need to hear the heartbeat of our industry. For quite a while I have heard the faint sounds of this heartbeat, but I have ignored it. But I feel that if I do not listen to it now, much of the work that I have done will be for naught. It is difficult to hear what is in a man’s heart.

Covered in mist, capped with eternal snows, full of legends and mystery, Mount Kilimanjaro is an awesome and magnificent climb. During dry seasons, locals blame the mountain's demons for taking away the rain, but when the rain becomes too much, they turn their faces to the mountain, bowing, asking God to forgive them.

It is perhaps time for us to ask forgiveness for what we are doing to the medical industry.
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why... This is why, in the words of Qui Gon of Star Wars, "I shall do what I must, Obi-Wan... "

See you on the Kilimanjaro

Uwe DIEGEL
Official manufacturer of happinesswww.medactiv.com
uwediegel@mac.com