Riding the Third Wave: Trends and Investment Opportunities in Medtech

By Sanjiv Goyal with Ajay Gupta

The healthcare sector has a paradoxical relationship with technology. In some areas, medicine is racing ahead by introducing revolutionary new drugs and devices, while in others, it lags almost embarrassingly far behind. Surgeons can perform arthroscopic repairs through an inch long incision, but most doctors’ offices still rely on paper files and fax machines.

Where is the future of the healthcare industry headed? What can we count on to shift and what will remain the same? Where are the entrepreneurial opportunities for growth and innovation? I sat down with Ajay Gupta, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Co. and IIT Delhi alumnus, to answer these very questions.

Big Pharma: The Last Forty Years

To understand where healthcare trends are headed we have to look at their history. In terms of pharmaceutical advancements, the eighties produced breakthroughs in medicinal chemistry. In the nineties developments revolved around molecular agents. Now we are in the third wave of innovation that started in the early two-thousands: biologics.

The Next Trend in Big Pharma

While the first two waves involved synthetically derived products, today the top drugs are biologics, drugs derived…