Top 4 Healthcare Predictions for 2010

This is a guest post from Cliff Cramer, Director of the Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Management Program at Columbia Business School. Do you have a response to Cramer’s post? Post them in the comments section below.

• Multi-national pharmaceutical and medical technology companies will increase their investments in emerging markets, notably China and India, to access cost effective human capital and a growing middle class of consumers better able to afford more advanced medical products.

• Information technology will make greater strides in a healthcare industry which has been slow to adopt, driven by financial incentives (e.g., government subsidies) and employees and consumers demanding better and more accessible information (e.g., transportable e-records) as their share of healthcare spending increases.

• Healthcare reform will continue across developed (U.S. and EU countries) and developing (China) markets, focused on increasing access to affordable and quality patient care. These initiatives are likely to be incremental due to political and economic (budget) considerations.

• Consolidation will be a major theme in 2010 as insurers and hospitals seek additional leverage in contract negotiations, and pharmaceutical companies explore transformational mergers to broaden product lines, strengthen geographic breadth (emerging markets) and seek to manage earnings given major patent expirations in the near term.

About Cliff Cramer:

Cliff Cramer has spent more than 25 years in the healthcare / pharmaceutical and financial services sectors. He was managing director at Merrill Lynch in the Global Healthcare Investment Banking Group and managing director at JPMorgan in the Corporate Finance Group, where he served as head of M&A for the pharmaceutical sector. Earlier, Cramer was vice president, corporate planning & development, for Merck & Co., Inc., with worldwide responsibilities for strategic planning and business development. In addition, he was cofounder of American Health Capital / VHA Enterprises, Inc., a healthcare / financial services company serving the capital needs of multihospital systems.