Medical Devices Sector Showing Signs of Recovery

MIXiii-BIOMED 2018 Conference chair Ruti Alon: The pendulum has to move back to medical devices, after a decade in which the sector was starved of financing.

For almost a decade, companies in the medical devices sector have lacked financing. Is this era about to end? A report published this month by rating

agency Moody’s signals the beginning of a change for the better. The company changed its forecast for the large international medical devices companies (Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, and Boston Scientific) from “Stable” to “Positive.” “We believe that the sector will post 4-5% growth in the next 12-18 months. Growth will have to come from

innovation in products, while the older products are still affected by downward pressure on prices,” the report states.

The forecast refers to the large companies, but it is also relevant to Israeli startups. Moody’s predicts that companies will want to stock up on new products after several years in which they did so rather slowly, and preferred to merge with each other and wait with new lines to see the development of the balance of forces between each other, between them and the hospitals, and between them and the insurance companies. “The companies are now benefitting from synergy as a result of the mergers in previous years, and are more able to expand in specific areas,” Moody’s writes.The Israeli medical market is welcoming this analysis, although it is still somewhat suspicious. Ahead of the MIXiii-BIOMED 2018 Conference and Exhibition in May, we spoke with two of its three chairpersons: Ruti Alon, who recently resigned her position as a partner for the medical sector at Pitango Venture Capital, and is now working at a new venture, details of which she is not yet willing to disclose, and Ora Dar, who recently resigned as head of life sciences at the Israel Innovation Authority. The third chairperson is OrbiMed Israel senior managing director Nissim Darvish.

medical device guru

MIXiii-BIOMED 2018 Conference chair Ruti Alon: The pendulum has to move back to medical devices, after a decade in which the sector was starved of financing.