StraMed - Focus on Cardio Devices

The medical device industry have a celebrity in the makings - the drug eluting stent. Used to cure artery blockages (scientifically known as ischaemic heart disease), drug eluting stents (DES) are now only manufactured by 2 companies, Johnson & Johnson's Cordis and Boston Scientific. However, investors all around the world are putting vast amounts of money into companies that are going into this market. For example, Guidant Corp. which has a DES in the making will be bought over by J&J Cordis for US$ 24.2 Billion and regionally, Singapore listed Biosensors share price was pushed up to above S$1.00 because of an expected release of its proprietary drug eluting stents due in 2006. Other large medical devices companies like Medtronic, Terumo, and Cook are also looking to launch their respective DES in the near future.
All this fuss about the cardiovascular devices market is due to the focus on high incidences of cardiac diseases across developing nations. With such diseases ranked amongst the top 5 mortality and morbidity causes in countries like Germany, US, UK, France, China, Korea, Singapore, Australia and Italy, there is a vast potential for systems to treat and cure a large number of patients and demand is expected to be supported with a fast ageing population as well as continuous practice of an unhealthy lifestyle like smoking and consumption of fast foods. Smoking and high cholestrol intake are 2 main aggravators of heart diseases, increasing risk by as much as 50%. However as people grow to become more health conscious, the question faced by investors will then be how to support sales volumes in the case of falling demand?
While it may not happen soon, some countries like Thaliand and Hong Kong have seen falling morbidity relating to cardiovascular diseases and though hospital admission numbers for such cases still fall within top 5 causes, high awareness of patients will ultimately lower the incidence of such diseases.