The Next Big Wave?

Wooo...wooo...wooo. These are not the droids you are looking for.

How do you know?

I dunno. Maybe because I am knowledgeable, and you are not?

My wave began in 1960, when I was born... and hopefully hasn't crested yet!

I agree quite a bit with what Ed had to say. Considering the question was posed by the medical community it's easy to see why they feel their field will experience the next big wave. Somewhat a self fulfilling prophecy.

I think a more important wave of need is already here and growing rapidly. In the Western world we take so much for granted. There's a massive amount of people that want to live a Western lifestyle. They want cars and convenience just like us. Everyone by now knows about the explosive growth in China and to a slightly lesser degree India. For a long time Indians traditionally ate 1 meal a day. Now with more prosperity many have begun to eat twice a day. These same people want to drive cars that burn fuel. These groups of people are already stressing existing supply chains of food and crude oil. The days of a slowing economy translating directly into a falling crude oil price are gone. When our demand here slacks it continues to stay strong worldwide. That natual buffer we enjoyed is gone.

Our future holds challenges on basic clean water, abundant and affordable food and energy. We can do it but now we have more consumers and the same amount of resoures to go around.

could the medical sector be the basis of the next big wave?

I believe it will be energy, not medical. Also if there is a cycle based on sine waves there has to be a negative alternating to a positive 1/2 node. Where we are at present, i could only guess, that America is in the negative portion of the cycle and China and India are in the positive.

Ron

The notion that a "life sciences economy" would be the next big economic wave became popular in government circles around the turn of the millenium, spawning a flurry of conferences with stakeholders, and implementation of official plans, to fund, foster and firmly take leadership of the 'life sciences' wave.

I attended a conference on this theme in 2001. The premise that life sciences would be taking center stage in the economy was assumed, and was based on the observation that our knowledge in the "life sciences" has been growing at an extraordinary rate. Innovation is expected to follow on some of these new discoveries.

What was not so clear was where do you draw the boundaries on "life science economy". With health industries being the biggest pig already at the trough, and looking around and seeing no other looming source of an economic boom, the 'life science economy' plans have largely devolved to the health industries. For example, the APEC plans are focused more or less exclusively on health sciences innovation, with a nod to population demographics that tell us, there is an aging boom generation who will be consumers of health care as they approach the end of life.

However, there is no sign that a wave of life science 'innovation' is emanating or will emanate from the established pharmaceutical industry. The FDA report "Innovation or Stagnation" in 2004 cites the statistical facts of the matter, and the various attempts to pump life into an industry in stagnation through the "Critical Path Initiative" since then, have failed. Nearly a decade of pampering later, there is no sign that fruitful innovation is on the rise in the world of pharmacy.

The big pharmaceutical players have gotten involved in 'security' industry technologies, in anticipation of an elderly (and captive) market for their existing drugs, and in need of monitoring. Robotic themes for "compliance" have been touted in blogs here on CR4, and this is a pretty unpleasant concept, for the seller of a product to foist upon the most vulnerable clients. This is not an innovation wave, it is a sign of the sector's decadence, accompanied by the move into sales of approved 'recreational' meds, news of the industry's increasing role in the supply of drugs of abuse to criminal markets, and criminal charges for false advertising, promotion of off-label uses, kickbacks to increase prescription rates to vulnerable seniors, etc, etc.

There has actually been a significant economic 'wave' in the competition, that is, natural health products, 'nutraceuticals' and 'complementary or alternative medicine'. Sadly the economic potential has been to a large extent stifled or undermined by the government instead of building the wave. The cultural potential for enlightened medicine that should flow from a greater knowledge of the natural world is unfulfilled, and a growth sector largely free of the encumbrance and cost of patents is stifled in order to pander to the established and stagnant industry.

When it comes to device, yes, there are amazing advances in prosthetic/robotic limbs and so on for the disabled, but as Ed W points out, the distribution is limited due to very high cost. These are specialty products, and the markets will always be limited for that reason as well. There are some real breakthroughs, like the 3D printer for tissues, which have a good chance of bearing fruit. But this alone doesn't constitute an economic wave for the sector.

If there is one medical sector basis for a "next big wave", it is the potential for preventive medicine and custom medicine to develop due to advances in test instrumentation. We have the capacity to develop the test instruments to address the questions not answered nor asked in the present medical sector, to plumb the depths of environmental medicine and the causes of disease. We can develop instruments to rapidly assess the individual's response to a treatment, whether the treatment is a drug, a natural product, a change of diet, a change of environment, physical therapy, whatever. That is the capacity to offer real choice to the consumer, and to customize care for safety, effectiveness, and patient health priorities. In other words, what EVERY consumer wants and needs. And that would be enough to make waves.