Yesterday, I was interviewed on the Zangani Investor Community about emerging trends in the life sciences with specific reference to implications for investors and others in the finance community.  You can hear the complete (seven minute) webcast at: Zangani webcast.  Here’s a brief summary of the discussion:

ZANGANI: Thank you Dr. Gurel, Now to our first question. Can you familiarize our community with the some of the market and industry trends you are currently covering?

In answering, I focused on the major trends of:

1.      Increasing emphasis on patient safety.  For more information on safety click here or download the PDF here.

2.      Growing importance of convergent (or combination) medical technologies (CMT).  For more information on CMT click here for an article “Tech Convergence a Key Theme at Orthopedics Conference in Chicago” from last year or here for a more recent article.  You can download both of these by clicking on “Tech Convergence” and “Future is Bright.”

3.      Rise of personalized medicine.  More about this can be found here or downloaded at "Personalized Medicine, Tech Convergence Decisive Trends."

I also noted that while safety, CMT and personalized medicine are separate issues there is actually quite a bit of overlap and relationship between them.  For example, personalized medicine often involves a combination between a diagnostic and a therapeutic (hence CMT) which often has the end result of reducing adverse effects and improving safety.

ZANGANI: That's great. Can you explain a little more to our audience about the criteria that you use to consider researching a particular medical technology?

I pointed out how our approach at the Aesis Group is to step-back from the particulars of the situation and look strategically from the “outside-in.”  That is to say that we complement the conventional due diligence or other such investment research that focuses on directly on the medical technology, the company itself, the management team, the financials and so forth but rather supplement that work with perspectives from the overall market, trends that are impacting technologies entering that market, sociocultural and industry factors that enable (or inhibit) adoption and governmental and regulatory trends that will also impact market entry and valuation.

ZANGANI: Is there anything we haven’t already covered that you would like to discuss?

I talked about the great potential (and risk) in the life sciences and in particularly highlighted again the concept of bringing new ideas together (such as with convergent medical technologies) to generate even greater valuation for deals.  For more on the growing importance of partnerships click here in an article “A Time To Make Friends” that I wrote during last year’s World Cup.  That article can also be downloaded by clicking "A Time to Make Friends."

It was a fun interview.  You can download it by clicking here and your posted comments are welcome.