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Backing Bionics in Case You Live to Be 150

13 February 2023

 

If you want to live forever, you’ll be disappointed. But there’s a growing chance that you might live to 120 or even 150, though. That’s because modern medicine is getting better at curing common killers like cancer and heart disease, even if it can’t stop you from getting run over by a bus. Yet the difficulty is that the body still ages, getting frailer over time.

That’s where bionics is beginning to step in. Leveraging advances in biologically-inspired engineering, medicine and robotics, it’s starting to hold some of the effects of ageing at bay. That’s likely to lead to a growing need for bionics from an ageing population that’s living far longer and wants to maintain some quality of life.

With the exception of parts of the southern hemisphere – notably, India and swathes of Africa – the world is ageing fast. By 2050, the number of people aged 80 or over is forecast to triple, from 143 million in 2019, to 426 million, according to UN data.1 And in regions like Asia, and China especially, the new aged will have a substantial income to spend on keeping life comfortable – call it the grey renminbi.

We believe that bionics will fulfil a desperate social need from the world’s ageing in years to come. The earliest prosthesis was a wooden toe discovered on the body of an ancient Egyptian mummified noblewoman, dating as far back as 950 B.C. Today, we have already progressed beyond the basics of artificial limbs to, for instance, brain stimulation for those suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. Tomorrow, the brains of paralyzed people will be able to speak directly to prosthetic limbs, transforming lives. Indeed, it’s likely that computers will eventually come to augment the brain.

To take a sad but topical example not related to ageing, injured soldiers are lately receiving bionic hands.2 Turning back to the illnesses of age, people with diabetes are wearing small implants under the skin that monitor glucose levels from a company called Dexcom. And, new artificial heart valves from companies like Edwards Lifesciences are becoming ever more effective at fighting heart disease.

Lifted by the irrepressible forces of ageing and frailty, demand for bionic devices looks set to grow fast in the years to come. A forecast from Growth+Reports anticipates that the technological advances of medical devices will meet a burgeoning need from an increasingly geriatric population seeking cures for chronic conditions such as arterial disease, hearing loss, joint failure and so on. It anticipates widespread use of bionics, especially in Asia with its rising incomes and expanding government healthcare initiatives.3 For these reasons, the organisation thinks the market for bionics will almost double in the decade to 2030 with a compound annual growth rate of 8% to $9.94 billion (see illustration).

Medical Bionic Implants Market Size, $bn

Medical Bionic Implants Market Size, $bn

For investors looking to benefit society, medical devices companies that are leading the development of bionics may be the answer. Not only are their revenues forecast to increase quickly, but share prices are trading at discounts to their values in 2020 before stock markets corrected.

We launched our VanEck Bionic Engineering UCITS ETF at the end of 2022 to take advantage of just such an opportunity. It won’t help you live forever, but by helping to fund the companies developing bionics it should contribute to helping us all have a long and comfortable old age. Please also consider that investing in ETFs involves risks, including the loss of capital.

1 World Population Prospects: the 2019 Revision.

2 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-64354345

3 Medical Bionics Implant Market – Global Outlook & Forecast 2022-2030. Growth+Reports. September 2022. https://www.growthplusreports.com/report/medical-bionic-implants-market/7802

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