9 Healthcare Predictions For 2017

Every year at Frost & Sullivan, the Transformation Health team brainstorm top predictions for the New Year to come. 2017 will definitely continue to be a year of tumultuous uncertainty and turbulence, but amidst this uncertainty we know for a fact that technology will continue to flourish and will have unprecedented impact on healthcare in terms of building some of the foundation blocks towards a connected home and healthcare ecosystem.

The following are our nine top predictions for healthcare for 2017:

Strong Push Toward Price Control And Transparency Measures Around Drugs
Public and political pressure on the control of surging drug prices, globally, will compel health authorities to bring transparency measures around drugs pricing, especially for some of the diabetes and cholesterol medicines where more low-cost generic competition is gaining market acceptance.
Blockchain Becomes One Of The Most Important Technologies In The Healthcare Industry
With the potential to change how healthcare information is stored, shared, secured and paid for, blockchain technologies have immense potential to tackle some of the biggest challenges in healthcare information management. Companies like Gem Health are among the few companies currently advocating the use and benefits of such a platform.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Transforms Medical Imaging Informatics
As more and more experts and healthcare professionals find the usability of these AI systems as decision support tools and not decision makers, uptake of AI-enabled clinical decision support tools is expected to increase in the coming years. More particularly during 2017, AI will play a big role in diagnostic imaging by complementing radiologists with advanced interpretation and imaging informatics supports.

How To Manage Your Wealth In A Sick Market

There are many things that are sick in this world. The Syrian Civil War is one, and the fact that a man who ignored allegations of sexual assault at Baylor University got to keep his job is another. But what’s sick at the moment is the stock market.

Wall Street is having a torrid time for a whole bunch of reasons. Unlike the guys over at UC Davis throwing money around, investors on Wall Street are unsure where to put their money. And it’s all down to the general economic stagnation messing up the country right now.

So how can you go about managing your wealth in this sick market so you can survive the next year?

Why Has the Market Got a Cold?

The reason the market is sick can be boiled down to a few problems. Many speculators cite the Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund implosionas one, but really this is just a symptom of a bad market. There’s a real risk that things are only going to get worse as time goes on.

The real reasons for this sick market are low interest rates and global quantitative easing. There are many negative results from both of these things, but on Wall Street they are fueling a trend of junk bonds. There are too many investors who are struggling to make an income, and so they are buying lots of mutual funds, ETFs, and those individual high-yield bonds they wouldn’t normally touch.

With the real risk of economic turmoil in Europe due to the British referendum on the European Union, and the idea that an increase in interest rates could be put off yet again, investors are worried.

The Natural Urge to Go Conservative

There’s always going to be some sort of natural urge to go conservative in situations like this. You don’t want to risk putting your income into a company that won’t experience growth. And so you will choose the ETFs and the various treasury bonds available.

The issue with going conservative is that you are guaranteeing that you won’t make any income. In fact, compare the yield with inflation and you have a situation where you are losing money every single year. Part of the problem is that you either stay conservative or you become desperate for income and start investing in junk investments.

So What Direction Should You Take?

Try to raise as much cash as you can. Take your money out of any junk bonds. They are not going to help the market and they are only going to further exacerbate the problem in the coming weeks and months.

Take your aggressive funds and turn them into a profit opportunity. Keep in mind that many financial stocks have weaknesses in their ability to obtain credit. This goes just as much for the average financial firm as it does for equity firms and fund management organizations.

There’s even a strong argument for taking your money completely out of the markets and investing in gold due to how weak currency is and how well gold is doing.

Source - https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/277392