Session 6

In today's session, we discussed about Bio business, which is the commercial activity based on life sciences and such technology based on life sciences. It includes various sectors like biomedical, agro-veterinary, environmental etc. Global bio business includes agriculture, healthcare, food sector, biotechnology, etc. Bio business accounts for 25% of the world's GDP. 

Prof told us about how the USA with only 5% of the world's populations, has 52% of the world’s health care resources. The USA is the biggest spender on health care. As people are gaining awareness about the various kinds of diseases and their cures, the demand for better health care is increasing all over the world.

Bio business provides many employment opportunities, employing 40% of the world's population. Most of the people are involved in low wage agricultural activities, which requires no skill, hence the contribution to income is lower than the employment rate. Agriculture is one sector of bio business, provides the highest proportion of employment opportunities.

We also discussed several concepts like NCE, which refers to New Chemical Entities, which have the potential of becoming drugs, Microbiology revolution refers to creating bacteria and yeasts, Multi cellular organism innovation is basically involved in cloning and so on.

Prof also discussed with us some major drivers of change in the healthcare and biomedical sciences like demographic and epidemiological change. As people go from rural to urban, their health care requirement changes. As population becomes wealthier, we are moving from infectious diseases to chronic diseases. Prof told us about the global burden of disease, which is the total proportion of opportunities lost due to diseases. 

It is predicted that Ischaemic heart diseases will be the leading cause of death by 2020, which is a susceptibility to cholesterol.

Advances in information and bioengineering technology. ICT has contributed significantly to health care. With the birth of ICT and computer systems, lot of progress has come about.

We were shown a video on Obesity, a world wide phenomena, which has become like a pandemic disease. However, obesity has led to high entrepreneurial opportunities. Businessmen are ceasing opportunities to produce and promote products which will help to reduce weight.

Innovation in the medical industry was also discussed. It is important to develop new method and new vaccines to help fight diseases.

One of the challenges pharmaceutical  industries are facing is the specification of drugs. Genes determine what drug affects your body in what way. It is important to know which drug will have what effect on different people. Pharmaceutical industries have to engage in research and development for this purpose.

An interesting thing I got to know about was Nutraceuticals- foods that have drug like properties, food supplements that benefit you and help to combat diseases. This concept was relatively new to me, and i believe it has tremendous potential.

I found an article in an Indian newspaper, talking about the growth of the nutraceutical industry:

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-08-19/news/41425288_1_east-india-dietary-supplement-indian-nutraceutical-market

Another interesting concept discussed in an individual presentation by Luo Xindi, was that of Veti Gel, an innovative way to stop bleeding immediately.

In all, this session was a very interesting one, and I'd like to rate it a 9 on 10. Various concepts were discussed about an up and coming industry of health care, which still has a long way to grow to provide more innovative and better health care products to the masses.