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INVESTORS LOOK TOWARDS ‘PEAK YOUTH’ By Scott Spencer, Ravenscroft Investment Management As my 81 year old dad regularly tells me, ‘Son, getting old is very overrated’.


Don’t get me wrong, he is currently fit and well and, whilst he has had his fair share of health issues, advances made in medicine and healthcare have helped prolong his wellbeing - alongside a life of moderation of course! An active sportsman in his younger days, he has since paid the price as surgeons who, lacking the quality equipment and know-how now available to them, were only too quick to remove his knee cartilage. He has had two new knees and as it so often goes both hips as well. For those of you old enough to remember, he often made references to Steve Austin of Six Million Dollar Man fame each time he had a new joint inserted into his body.


The world’s population continues to grow; there are roughly 7.3 billion of us on planet Earth today, with China and India accounting for roughly one third of the global population. To think, since 1950 the world’s population has effectively doubled in size – in part due to improved healthcare, which is reducing child mortality rates and extending life expectancies. A consequence of this shift combined with falling fertility rates is that the median age of our global population has increased significantly. Over the last four decades, the median age has increased by as much as ten years in developed regions. In fact, if birth rates remain the same as they were this year, by 2020 we will see ‘peak youth’, whereby there will be more people aged 65 and above than children under five.


Within reason, in the developed world - despite the negative press that plagues the NHS - most of us can access a reasonable level of healthcare provision. In contrast to this, Emerging Economies currently provide very little in the way of public healthcare for their citizens. Of course, this will hopefully not always be the case and this change can present attractive investment opportunities.


Two of our core global investment themes are the Emerging Consumer and Healthcare. Companies that recognised the rapid growth in the emerging world and the investment opportunity that this creates in the healthcare sector positioned themselves long ago to benefit from this demographic shift. Some companies such as US giant Johnson & Johnson have had billion dollar facilities on the ground in China for the best part of a decade; biding their time


as China’s economy broadens to such an extent that a healthcare programme becomes the norm.


Our exposure to the Healthcare sector is diverse, from Big Pharma to Biotech, Oncology (prevention and diagnosis of cancer) to Medical Devices (pacemakers, surgical equipment including robots), Diagnostics and so on. A new exciting area in the sector is likely to be “Personalised Healthcare”, where 3-D printers may replicate heart valves so as to give a perfect fit and reduce the chances of rejection. Med-tech is another innovation that will see massive advances in the coming years. It could be that your chosen smart watch or phone is able to interact with your body’s biorhythms and advise your local GP or hospital before you fall ill or are at risk of a life-threatening stroke. Your device will tell you to sit down and then do the rest in terms of communications.


Another recently-developed mobile phone application could also make monitoring conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease, and urinary tract infections much clearer and easier for both patients and doctors, and could eventually be used to slow or limit the spread of pandemics in the developing world. The app, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, accurately measures colour-based, or colorimetric, tests for use in home, clinical or remote settings, and enables the transmission of medical data from patients directly to health professionals.


Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention two of the biggest challenges for human health in today’s ageing population - Alzheimer’s and Care for the elderly. When it comes to these two fields, medical science is running at its fastest pace in history. The successful sequencing of the human genome has led to the widely held expectation that genomic studies will lead to advances in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, and to new insights into many fields of biology, including human evolution. That might come too late for some of today’s elderly, but by the time our kids reach a ripe old age, who knows what will be possible. They say a child born this January in the UK will live to be 150 years old! I’m not sure that we are meant to live that long, but as my dad might say, ‘enjoy your life, as you are a long time dead’.


An Ageing Island Page 37


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