"Age Gain Now Empathy System", or "Agnes"

In a saturday article on the New York Times, the author wears an “instant-aging” suit to understand the physical challenges of a 74-year-old person. It’s part of the research being done on aging at MIT. Other examples abound in which the idea behind studying aging is no longer just for medical or policy-making, macro-economic, demographic-challenge stuff: it’s about senior citizens as a consumer force to be reckoned with, and how to market for them. As one person says in the article: “If you are a Fortune 100 company, or an inventor in a garage, where are you going to find another demographic that is that large, that robust in spending power, that open to new possibilities, and that underserved?”

Related thought: we’re always struck at how international research institutions and universities work closely with companies. Why is it so hard to foster the same culture in Brazil, and more importantly, how much is this holding us back?

One interesting source from the article is the Disruptive Demographics blog, by Dr. Joseph F. Coughlin of the MIT AgeLab. We’re still starting to digest their content.

We were very interested in the work and research of Eric Dishman, a fellow at Intel in charge of research into digital health/ assisted living technologies. His talk at TEDMed 2009 is quite thought-provoking. We’ve also found a poorly-filmed yet very interesting interview with him by the Health Care Blog where he highlights some examples of products that have been available, embedded next to the TEDMed talk.

First, our usual word of caution regarding skepticism, this time from a previous post at Buysiders.com called “Time Perspectives“: “In fact, it’s downright scary how the ‘coolness’ of the presentation can lead one to ‘lower one’s guard’ to data that’s not necessarily accurate or that answers not necessarily the right questions. (…) here’s a quote that applies to the case at hand: ‘One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways.’ “

The Economist’s Babbage blog recently published a “Greatest Hits by Hans Rosling” listing many of his popular presentations, TED or not. There’s also a link to an Economist magazine profile on him (actually the latter inspired the former).

As promised, here’s the full-length, 59-minute BBC documentary The Joy of Stats:

Hans Rosling doesn’t sit still. Besides his teaching job at the Karolinska Institute, his Gapminder foundation is a very interesting project in data gathering/ transparency/ visualization. In fact, you can build your own graph like the one in the trailer right here, for free. Here’s a video on how to use this data:

There’s also a 57-minute swedish documentary on Mr. Rosling (subtitles in English):

Last but not least, an impressive video on data visualization, from a TED talk by David McCandless:

The truth is that it’s way too early to assess the full effects, but analysts are already throwing around conclusions. When one thinks about it, most of the reform’s effects will happen after 2014, longer than most people’s investment horizons, which means most investors are either ignoring reform or using it as a means to speculate. Fixed income markets may be looking at greater future fiscal deficit, but haven’t acted on it yet.

IP’s position has always been to recognize our own ignorance and try not to depend on particular outcomes – without neglecting selective Healthcare exposure. We’ve chosen diversified companies over time, whose business is much more associated with a “picks and shovels” theme (such as Thermo-Fisher) or those in which there’s a strong consumer brand poised to benefit (such as Johnson & Johnson).

About the bill in general, politics can be a very volatile field – it’s a governance conundrum one could be happy to stay away from. The long debate on health reform ended with what seems to be a hard outlook for some health plan operators, but a broad tailwind for the general industry: plan coverage, by various means, should increase substantially going forward (estimated 32mm new enrollees over 10 years).

Large pharma companies are, at first, picking up the bill for the entire drug value chain (US$90 Bi fees over 10 years), which makes research equipment providers (upstream from pharma) as well as drug distributors (downstream) prone to benefit from increased coverage without a significant burden. Over time these fees should flow along the chain and, ultimately, to consumers.

LINKS

The official press release

With IMS Deal, Healthcare is Back on Top – WSJ’s Private Equity Beat blog

How do You Get Out of IMS Health – Barron’s (on what could be TPG’s exit strategy – independence is a very important feature of IMS’s business model, so pharma cies. are out of the picture. But who said TPG won’t try to go public with IMS in a few years?)