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EF: What attracted you to be part of the Medical Cluster in Jalisco?
MG: I am a pediatrician and had a medical practice for thirty-five years. In 2016, the minister of innovation, science and technology in Jalisco wanted to start a health sector cluster; they were working very hard in the automotive area with Germans and thought it would be a good opportunity to add to the value chain by having all the stakeholders together. The then minister, Jaime Reyes Robles, asked me to start the project. In Mexico, big organizations, such as AMIIF, AMID, and Canifarma, each work in their sector but are not linked. I accepted the job and worked with various ministers to find academia, research centers, startups, SMEs and non-profit organizations, and big companies to participate in the value chain. We worked on areas not covered, mainly innovation, our most important activity. We were the only cluster working in this sense, and the German healthcare partnership, which was part of the BDI, helped us by explaining how they did things in German clusters.
We had a big kick-off in Mexico with the participation of leaders. At the start of our journey, we worked with the companies for a couple of years to realize our area's value, Jalisco. Today, we are in touch with big organizations in the country, such as AMID and AMIIF, as well as companies such as Medtronic, Siemens Healthineers, and some pharmaceutical companies. Our objective is to do something different in Mexico, ensuring all the stakeholders speak and listen to each other; the patients also need to be heard. Prevention is important for the population because we don’t need to be ill to be considered part of the health sector. We want to contribute to a mindset change and be disruptive. Mexico is a big country with different mentalities and needs, and we want to speak to the population using their words. The minister of health, the minister of labor, and the minister of sports are important in changing people's lives, and we need to address everybody so we can change their behavior. Changing the population's mindset on prevention will be difficult, but we need to be part of a model for children to change their lifestyles. To this end, we have been working closely with embassies and international organizations, including the United Kingdom embassy. The Mexican embassy in Norway invited us twice to participate in the Oslo Innovation Week in 2022 and 2023, with AMIIF as part of our delegation. We have also worked closely with the Netherlands; I was in Rotterdam in September last year, learning from them and finding the links to bring our companies and researchers to these countries to experience first-hand what they are doing. We can also assist their researchers in making a soft landing in Mexico through the assistance and expertise of our members. We are a nonprofit organization; we know the dependable stakeholders and can link them up with experts in their field, which is important to make things happen. We are also part of an organization in Latin America, the America Continental Health Alliance, which comprises Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay.
During the pandemic, we worked very hard through webinars to understand what was happening in the region. Chile is strong in their field, Argentina is very strong in university research, and Brazil, with Elsevier, a big company, was also part of our project. We are part of a world organization, the European Connected Health Alliance, which has more than 90 ecosystems; our ecosystem is the only Mexican ecosystem part of it. We work with other parties, companies, researchers, and universities. We invest time in understanding the regulations of other countries because it is the first step to advancing health systems. We aim to work with the government and be part of initiatives presented in Congress, together with big companies participating in and supporting new projects or initiatives. In Jalisco specifically, we participate in public policy in “The first 1000 days”, which is important for children. The initiative covers from pregnancy to two years after the child is born. We work with UNICEF Mexico to create policies to benefit a child during lactation, and this is important because the microbiota of the baby can be changed without the lactation period and can be one of the causes of certain diseases like obesity. Mexico occupies the first place worldwide in obesity, and to generate change, we must start from the beginning. The abuse of antibiotics can affect the child's microbiota, so there must be education on the importance of breast milk. Another policy we have worked on with the Ministry of Health and the government in Jalisco is on type one diabetes, not only in detection but also in checkups and the availability of insulin, which are already included in the law. We want to link all stakeholders in their commitment to benefit society in the health sector.
EF: You touched on many topics: the value of innovation, the shift to a preventative approach, and the value of educating society and teaching patients to be proactive. Did COVID change your organization´s priorities, did you learn from it, and what are your priorities for 2024?
GM: Covid was a great opportunity to work with other countries, including the American Continental Health Alliance. Everybody was at home and ready to speak and to learn. It provided us with a great chance to advance with telemedicine as so many patients were unattended, particularly in non-communicable pathologies and diseases, such as hypertension, hyperthyroidism, and diabetes. Telemedicine was a great opportunity to work with electronic records. Currently, patients are very used to WhatsApp consultancy, which is not so good because no laws cover it or legal support if something goes wrong, something that should be considered for the next possible pandemic. Telemedicine is also a way to access remote communities in Mexico where a primary care doctor attends to patients, and there are no medical specialists for renal, cardiovascular, or neural diseases. Telemedicine can overcome issues of resources and late detection of diabetes. We also became aware of Covid´s psychological impact, which was very high. As we have learned from the health ministry, the primary care units are crowded with people suffering from depression, fatigue, and anxiety. We have to keep an eye on this situation, especially as regards children and youngsters, as it concerns drugs, alcohol, and smoking. It is our social responsibility to help these communities; they need help. There is a good opportunity for the device sector to dedicate resources to assist them. In pharmaceuticals, the mRNA platforms of Moderna, Pfizer and Astra Zeneca have become relevant and give important information on the treatment of pathologies that will change the world. Over the next years, we will be working on the necessary changes, inviting those stakeholders involved in innovation to join us and companies to propel the small startups with very good ideas that need support.
EF: What is Jalisco´s role in the Mexican healthcare ecosystem, and what makes one dollar invested in Jalisco more valuable than elsewhere?
MG: Jalisco is geographically very well located and well communicated by air and road. It is a three-hour drive from the ocean, making us a great location and a reference in Mexico. The climate is good for the health sector; due to the great weather, medical tourism and hospitals flourish in Jalisco. A very important fact is that the state government is very open to working with the healthcare industry. They listen to us and try to help the population; when plans are presented, they consider the benefit for society, producing results. Four new policies are in place, and they have invested a lot in the health sector, not just in the metropolitan area, in Guadalajara, and Zapopan but in the whole state in the more isolated areas. They are now finishing installing WIFI communication in common areas throughout the state. The government ministers work together, and health, education, social, and sports ministers collaborate, which is very helpful for the state's progress. Many states do not have connections abroad; Jalisco works economically with other countries, such as the United States, Canada, and Asia, and works with SMEs to internationalize them. It is easier to work in Jalisco, where the government has the population’s confidence. The government has worked on transport, and the state is well-connected, which has changed people´s mentality. Jalisco has some very big and successful companies in the electronic sector. The health industry is not as strong as in the North, in Baja, where they are very strong in medical devices, but still, we have PISA, one of the country's biggest pharmaceutical companies, Laboratorios Sophia, and others. I am very proud of my state.
EF: Can you comment on the importance of medical tourism in advancing innovation? If we continue to foster the environment for medical tourism, what does it mean for the private and public sectors?
GM: It is important for the economic sector. Expo Guadalajara is a huge place where many medical conventions and summits are carried out. Jalisco has wonderful hospitals that are medical tourism leaders. The hospitals are big, well equipped, and have excellent physicians who sometimes travel to other parts of the country to operate on patients. We have cardio, neuro, orthopedics, and plastic surgery, providing a wide range of possible surgeries. Jalisco is racing ahead, with medical tourism in the city and on the coast in Puerto Vallarta. We recently had a summit coordinated by Dr Humberto Ceballos from Puerto Vallarta; last year, it was in Tijuana, and this year, the international summit on medical tourism is in Cancun. The most important thing to speak about is the Mexican brand, not Jalisco or Monterey; we should work together to provide a complete value chain, hotels, transport, and restaurants alongside the hospitals. For example, a restaurant serving medical tourists must offer food with no salt for cardiovascular patients, and so forth.
EF: Mexico has a growing private healthcare sector but a public system with many gaps. How should public-private partnerships evolve, and what issues could they tackle?
MG: The public and private sectors must speak the same language to the patient to work on prevention. Many patients go to the private and public sectors; it is very important to have a united message, for example, in diabetes. If we don’t work together, we will never have enough resources to prevent and solve the problems. Reeducation is necessary to attach patients to treatments because it is not uncommon for patients not to come in for their treatments if they are feeling well. We must be proactive, and the health sector must create policies as one, not separate private or public health areas. For example, regarding the “One thousand days,” we have a policy that indicates that when the babies are born, the hospital staff interacts with them, and this occurs both in private and public hospitals because it is policy. The health sector in Mexico is divided into four parts: IMSS workers, the government workers in ISSSTE, those who have no services and are provided for by the state, and those who have private insurance. As the parts don’t speak to each other and we don’t have e-records, the patient´s information can be easily lost, but now there is an opportunity to unite efforts.
There is an initiative in Jalisco for cancer patients who live up to one hour outside the city; they pick them up and drop them off, ensure they have refrigerators, and ensure the house has electricity and other necessities. The public and private sectors need to talk together to make collective sense.
EF: How does the Cluster Medico de Jalisco select members? What do you look for when you accept new memberships? Would you like to mention any member for their outstanding or innovative work?
MG: We have members from the academia, the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara, the UTEG, and Tec de Monterrey, but these are limited to their involvement in the health sector. We need biologists, chemists, pharmaceutical professionals, software developers, doctors, nurses, psychologists, and nutritionists. We work with them and provide the contacts they need nationally and internationally. It could be student interchange, organizing a seminar, or bringing a certain professor to the country. Currently, the Hospital Civil de Guadalajara, part of the University of Guadalajara, is having a big congress, and we are helping them find speakers for people in Spain. We are also looking for researchers for CONACYT research centers, which have federal organizations, and we have a memorandum of understanding agreement (MOU). We contact researchers here with colleagues in other countries, and we can help in multi-centric research. We have been invited four times to the World Health Summit in Berlin and have brought researchers in genetics back with us. We put people in contact and link them up; we don’t intervene in the work unless invited. We help many startups; we have an OTT (Technology Transfer Office) that works with us. They are one of our members who help us with startups.
Regarding SMEs, they are very welcome to join us; we charge a very small fee per year to support our organization, not for our services, as it could be a conflict of interest. We respect talent, are told many great innovative ideas, and do not speak about them unless they authorize us to. From the Germans, we learned the need to be transparent. Like most big companies, we look for transparency, an important issue when selecting our members. We are organizing a big innovation event in Mexico called “Talent Land” in Jalisco, in its 6th edition. I will be organizing the “Health Land” portion of the event. It is between the government and private companies, and it is for businesses and developers. Thirty-five thousand people attend. We show innovation in a transverse way, with 78 conferences over four days, and it's our third edition in the health sector. After this sort of event, people came and looked for us, so it was an excellent networking opportunity; Funsalud and AMIIF came, and they were also speakers.
EF: What does your agenda look like in 2024, and how do you strategically prioritize initiatives to further the advancement of healthcare in Mexico?
MG: I was selected to represent the Ayuntamiento de Madrid in Mexico. I am flying to Madrid on March 1st, and being part of it is a great honor. I am also working closely with the UK, looking for ways to collaborate and helping people in the United Kingdom to come to Mexico and Mexican organizations to go to the UK. On the 13th of March, I will join a group invited by the Netherlands Embassy in Mexico as the minister of the economic sector is here, to open doors and collaborate. We also have some summits for researchers, which I will moderate for two days in March; V Clinical Research Insider Summit 2024 (clinical research offices here, which are very attractive for pharma and medical devices companies as they make the products less expensive, and we already have the authorizations in place. In the short term, we will consolidate some activities with the Jalisco government, although we might have a new government soon, so everything is up in the air.
