Note from the Editor

Are we ready? A huge wave of business is coming our way, but only to those who are planning right now for the impending new reality. I refer of course to demographics. What will it be like living in a society where up to one half of all the people around us are aged over 60? If we stop to think about it for a moment, that conjures up a quite a picture. We have been told for years that the world population is getting older, but this change has been so imperceptibly slow it has not created a dramatic impact, as yet. It will. This demographic shift is accelerating fast. Between 2000 and 2050, the world population older than 60 will more than double. In many countries, notably Japan and Western Europe, the share of the population aged 60 plus will be more than 40% by 2050.

 

This translates into golden opportunities for the medical device industry. Companies have been aware of this for some time and have presumably taken this into account when forming their business strategies. Market research companies have predicted burgeoning markets in a variety of product sectors. Ageing joints and active lifestyles will grow the orthopaedic implants market by 20% by as early as 2012 we are told. The demand for transdermal patches is to increase dramatically because they will be used in the delivery of pain management medication, for example, to treat osteoarthritis, and will be crucial to maintaining quality of life. In the US alone, reportedly more than one hundred thousand surgical procedures are performed daily and this number is to increase significantly as the population ages, particularly cardiovascular, orthopaedic, urological and dermatological procedures. And so on. The details of these and other market research alerts can be found on our blog site: medtechinsider.com.

 

As life expectancy heads towards 100, technologists in our industry will continue to do what they do best: invent and produce. For example, they will build long lasting prostheses: composite materials are being developed that could enable the development of orthopaedic implants made from carbon nanotubes, zirconia ceramic and nanoparticles of zirconia that will last more than 150 years. To profit and to deliver, the companies that employ those technologists, and governments, need to have business visions that extend out for 10, 15 and more years, a longer time span than most political and management agendas. The “silver tsunami” is coming (term coined by author Martin Amis). This is not a threatening force, but a giant wave of opportunity and we can’t say we weren’t warned!