Branding strategies discussed by the experts. Trends that will shape strategy in 1998.

This month the focus is on branding. The Alliance Advisory Council's discussion of this topic, led by Joel English (a senior vice president with BVK/McDonald, Milwaukee, WI), identifies the key issues on branding as: 1) the debate between the local and regional nature of healthcare delivery, and the need to provide customers with the trust and security of a larger entity behind the individual provider; 2) the challenge of identifying and agreeing on a consistent message for all parts of the system; and 3) the difficulty of keeping the promise implied by a brand across these many components.

Alternative medicine's potent attraction for boomers and seniors.

Ever since Harvard's David Eisenberg, MD, published his groundbreaking findings in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993 (for example, that there were more visits to complementary or alternative medicine practitioners in 1990 than to all general practitioners and family practice physicians combined; and 83 million adults were spending about $11 billion on alternative or complementary medicine), interest in the marketplace implications has grown. Anne Alexander, editor of Prevention magazine, and Leah Kliger, principal of The Lakes Group, Lake Stevens, WA, provided some new information at The Alliance For Healthcare Strategy and Marketing's Annual Conference in March.

[Investigations of polymethylmetacrylate for replacement of small joints (author's transl)]. / Materialtechnische Untersuchung zur der Verwendbarkeit von Polymethylmethacrylat für den Erstz kleiner Gelenke

Swelling, monomer production, polymerization and frictional qualities of test samples of Palocos E, Palacos R and Paladon 65 (Messrs Kulzer & Co, Bad Homburg) have been examined in order to establish which of these plastic substances would be most suitable for replacement of small joints. We found that samples of Palacos E, hardened under pressure of 3.0 kp, had the most favorable qualities.