Obesity World Wide: Translating to worlds biggest market and big investment opportunity

The Obesity technologies are back in action as AMA declares obesity as a disease.
This is game changing opportunity for many companies.
Young companies like: ONCIOMED, Inc, RESHAPE MEDICAL, BARANOVA, GI DYNAMICS, ALLERGAN, OBALON, VALENTX are at the forefront of all the obesity technologies.
There are in all about 10 promising companies medical device companies in a market estimated to reach $139.5 Billion by 2017.
Company with a novel technology that is currently raising capital is ONCIOMED, Inc based in Irvine, Ca.
info@onciomed.com; CEO is Dr. Raj Nihalani.( raj@onciomed.com )
Other companies have recently raised capital and conducting clinical trials.

Australia uses a graphic ad campaign to prevent obesity! Australia 5th Obese Country!

Australia and New Zealand are still among the fattest nations in the world. According to a United Nations report, the Australasian countries have once again reached the top five of world's most obese and populous nations, with Mexico and United States leading the fat race.

Just like last year, Australia remains at fifth place with 24.6% of its population considered obese, while New Zealand is still at third with 26.5%.
There's no surprise there as the two neighbouring countries have done little movement in the chart in the past years.
 
However, it's worth noting that the United States, which had held the title of the most obese among populous countries for a long time, has now passed the torch to Mexico.
According to the report, which was conducted by the United Nations, its southern neighbour is the new country with the most number of overweight residents. Mexico was previously only second to the U.S. About 70% of adults in Mexico are considered overweight, while 32.8% are considered obese.

How did Mexico get so obese?According to the Daily Mail, it managed to nab the unwanted title with a combination of a few factors, including poverty and expensive healthy food.
With nearly 50% of the country's population are considered poor and the rich have already turned to healthier lifestyles, it is the malnourished that are becoming obese.
"The same people who are malnourished are the ones who are becoming obese," physician Abelardo Avila was quoted by the paper as saying. "In the poor classes we have obese and malnourished children. The worst thing is the children are becoming programmed for obesity. It's a very serious epidemic."
A resident, Sally Neiman who has lived in the country for 20 years, explained further, "Because of a lack of money and food, people go for more energy-intense foods. These are often high in sugar or fat. People drink Coca-Cola as if it was water in order to have the energy to carry on - and so many of the foods are rich in carbs, are full of cheese or are fried.
"There is no control in schools to what kids eat these days, it is normal to see a kid having a soda for breakfast and eating 'comida chatarra' (junk food), it is allowed to be sold in schools."
Healthier food in Mexico tend to be pricier as well for the poor and working class; hence, they choose the heavier yet cheaper food.
The U.S. is still at close second with 31.8% of its population considered obese.

Obesity in Mexico: Mexico surpasses US as world's most obese nation

The United States no longer holds the title of the world’s most populous, obese nation; that designation has been passed on to Mexico.

According to a new report from the United Nations, nearly 70 percent of Mexican adults are overweight, and childhood obesity in the country has tripled within the past decade, Medical Daily reported.  One-third of Mexican teenagers are also obese, and experts believe that four out of every five obese children will remain overweight for the rest of their lives.

Overall, 32.8 percent of Mexican adults are considered obese, compared to 31.8 percent of adults in the United States.  Nearly 70,000 deaths in Mexico each year are caused by weight-related diabetes, and more than 400,000 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed annually.
Experts believe the rise in Mexico’s obesity rates has to do with the continuously growing gap between the country’s classes, as 50 percent of the population currently lives below the poverty line.  According to Medical Daily, healthy diets are becoming less affordable, prompting individuals with low incomes to consume more unhealthy foods, such as fried foods and soda.
One researcher also believes the increase can be attributed to more Mexicans moving from rural to urban areas, where food prices are much higher and sedentary lifestyles are easier.
“The result is that for many Mexicans, particularly in urban areas or in northern states, switching to healthier diets is becoming increasingly difficult," UN expert Olivier de Shutter wrote in a report on Mexican agriculture and nutrition.

Attend the Obesity & Diabtes Innovation Summit in Oct 3-4 in Orange County, Ca.

This is an important time in the fight against obesity and diabetes

For the first time there is going to be a Obesity & Diabetes Innovation Summit in Orange County, California in Oct 3-4, 2013. 

10 Medical device and 10 pharma companies will be talking about their innovations in obesity and diabetes.
 Sponsor companies will get an opportunity to voice their support for obesity.

Who should attend: Expected guest 250-300

 Medical device and pharmaceutical executives, business development executives (tremendous opportunity to partner with young start ups early).

Sponsor companies who are joining the fight against obesity.

Start up companies who can get tremendous visibility to investor and strategic partners

VCs, private investors, PE executives and boutique investment bankers as this new disease classification brings more opportunity in this space.

Doctors, Nutritional experts, medical device, pharma and hospital/healthcare executives, allied health care professionals.

To sponsor, showcase or qualify to present please email a non-confidential company profile to info.odis1@gmail.com

Top 20 in the obesity and diabetes space will be presenting at the innovation summit.

Arundhati Parmar Sr Editor for MD &DI: North American Obesity Market to Swell to $139.5B by 2017, Spells Opportunity for Device Makers

Published: July 8, 2013

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• Medical Device Business

North American Obesity Market to Swell to $139.5B by 2017, Spells Opportunity for Device Makers

A new research report forecasts that the weight loss and obesity management market in North America will increase to $139.5 billion in 2017, up from $102 billion in 2012.

The market includes medical device products used in weight loss surgery, and the report from MarketsandMarkets underscores the opportunity for medical device manufacturers. In the medical device arena, the opportunity seems to be primarily in areas that provide patients an alternative to invasive surgery. The report said:

Minimally-invasive and non-invasive surgical procedures that use highly sophisticated equipment like endoscopes and laparoscopes have been developed. In addition, non-invasive weight loss techniques like cryolipolysis, transoral obesity revision surgery, cold laser shaping, and Stomaphyx are also gaining popularity.

It remains to be seen whether American Medical Association's decision to consider obesity a disease will have an effect on the overall size in the market. When the June decision from the AMA came down, it marked a real uproar because some believed that considering obesity a disease basically means that individual responsibility can be denied. People who lead unhealthy lifestyles can simply believe that clinical intervention is automatically required instead of a change in behavior.
The same debate has spilled over to a discussion on the LinkedIn Medical Devices Group. Politics aside, what is salient about the discussion is that some users of the group believe the growing market holds great promise for medical device inventors.
Take user Paul Stein for instance. A medical device professional, formerly with St. Jude Medical, Stein believes that medical devices will succeed in tackling the epidemic that is obesity where pharmaceutical companies have failed. Here is an edited version of his comments:

For us in the medical devices industry, we need to look at this as a tremendous opportunity to create the next generation of medical devices.
The current set of drugs, along with their toxicities, do very little. And, the one marketed medical device, the Lap Band, has proven its worth in treating obesity. But, the most important fact that needs to be soberly understood is that the little medical device company that invented that device was paid $1.2B by Allergan for it. Yes, that's a B.
One of the other very popular treatments for obesity, the vertical sleeve gastrectomy, uses several thousands of dollars of linear staples (Covidien, J&J) per procedure. Performed over a million times per year, you do the math.

Stein points to one startup that he is working with - Onciomed - that he believes has the potential to address the global obesity challenge. The Irvine, California firm has devised a minimally-invasive procedure called the GVS System that restricts food intake while providing a feeling of fullness and satiety.
Fred Voss, another LinkedIn user who commented on the discussion, is also working on an innovative device to treat obesity while achieving the positive effects of bariatric surgery. San Clemente, California-firm PlenSat, where Voss is CEO, has developed what it calls digestible balloons. The capsules containing the balloons can be ingested over several days, thereby slowly changing stomach volume. They result in the patient feeling a sense of fullness.
The opportunity in treating obesity is not simply limited to startups though. Another LinkedIn user, Patrick Pickerell commented on how insurance reimbursement for devices used in obesity procedures as a result of AMA's decision is proving to be a boon to his company - Peridot. Pickerell is president of that firm based in Pleasanton, California.

My company (Peridot) is a supplier of precision metal and plastic components to the minimally invasive device companies. As such we have at least half a dozen clients in the stomach reduction space that have placed their bets on just such a ruling. Insurance reimbursement codes mean the difference between a viable exit/sale of these startups so from a business standpoint (somewhat selfishly I admit) I am glad for the ruling.
From an economic point of view it seems better to treat obesity now than pay for the long term effects of diabetes and heart disease.

 [Photo Credit: iStockPhoto.com user jangeltun]

-- By Arundhati Parmar, Senior Editor, MD+DI

Obesity and Diabetes may Banckrupt the Nation!! This is a unmet need!

We all know that Obama care will make it more expensive and we will pay more out of pocket to get treatment.
Obesity cost the nation $140 Billion annually.Obesity is the world's biggest market.

The policy makers can make it easy by incentivizing VCs to invest in Obesity technologies and in life science technologies. This will enable innovation or we will be paying more for royalties to international innovators.
WHITE HOUSE its up to you now!!!

Ultimately, Obamacare  may be able to offer healthcare to a wide array of people but may fail to remedy the ills of rising health insurance and healthcare costs. Meanwhile, in addition to taxes and penalties, the new entitlement program will be financed by more than $700 billion in cuts from Medicare over a ten year period. This means that retirees will need to buy additional supplemental insurance through one of the health care companies.

Childhood Obesity Now Becoming A Major Health Care Concern: Focus on UK's Childhood Obesity Admissions

Childhood Obesity Now Becoming A Major Health Care Concern: Focus on UK's Childhood Obesity Admissions
Obesity is now the worlds biggest health care market. Currently the treatments are diet, exercise, appetite suppressants from Vivus and Arena pharmaceuticals, medical devices like the lap-band from Allergan and then novel medical devices like The DUO from Reshape, Endo-barrier from Gi Dynamics, GVS from Onciomed, Inc, Intra-gastric balloon from Obalon, Baronova.
These are a few companies that are at the top list of obesity intervention. But the problem is so profound and options so few that all these companies have a tremendous opportunity to grow or get acquired. Unfortunate that a company like Satiety was ahead of its time in adoption and regulatory process. The product had its limitations like the ( profile and navigation through the esophagus) would have been approved in the current regulatory environment and possibly be acquired for v high valuation. VCs were on the side lines and now returning to the obesity field to invest in new technologies.
 
The number of children admitted to hospital for problems related to obesity in England and Wales quadrupled between 2000 and 2009, according to the 'Rising Obesity-Related Hospital Admissions among Children and Young People in England: National Time Trends Study', by researchers at Imperial College London, UK.
Using the Hospital Episodes Statistics database, they reported on the number of hospital admissions for children and young people aged five to 19 where obesity was recorded in the diagnosis, between 2000 and 2009.
The study, published in the journal Plos One, states that in 2009 there were 3,806 children admitted to hospital for obesity-related conditions, compared with just 872 in 2000. Alarmingly, nearly three quarters of these admissions were to deal with problems complicated by obesity such as asthma, breathing difficulties during sleep and complications of pregnancy, rather than obesity itself being the primary reason.
"The burden of obesity is usually thought to have its serious consequences in adulthood, but we now see it manifesting earlier, in childhood," said Dr Sonia Saxena, from the School of Public Health at Imperial, who led the study. "It's clear that rising obesity levels are causing more medical problems in children, but the rise we observed probably also reflects increasing awareness among clinicians, who have become better at recognising obesity."
For this study the researchers defined total obesity admissions as comprising both primary and secondary diagnoses of obesity and reported on the number of children and young people who underwent bariatric surgical procedures for the management of obesity during the study period.
The found that between 2000 and 2009, age- and sex-specific hospital admission rates in 5–19 year olds for total obesity-related diagnoses increased more than four-fold from 93.0 (95% CI 86.0 to 100.0) per million children to 414.0 (95% CI 410.7 to 417.5) per million children, largely due to rising admissions where obesity was mentioned as a co-morbidity.
The median age of admission to hospital over the study period was 14.0 years; 5,566 (26.7%) admissions were for obesity and 15,319 (73.3%) mentioned obesity as a comorbidity (Table 1). Admissions were more common in girls than boys (56.2% v 43.8%) and the most common reasons for admission where obesity was a comorbid condition were sleep apnoea, asthma, and complications of pregnancy.
Overall admissions were more common in girls than boys (56.2% v 43.8%) and increased with age from 18.7%, 40.1% and 41.2% for age groups 5–9, 10–14 and 15–19 years respectively.

Table 1. Demographic characteristics of children and young people admitted with obesity-related diagnosis over the entire study period, by primary or secondary diagnosis, 2000 to 2009.

Hospital admission rates for obesity increased almost four-fold from 21.0 (95% CI 17.5 to 24.5) per million children in 2000 to 78.8 (95% CI 77.0 to 80.6) in 2009. Admission rates for obesity as a comorbidity increased from 70 (95% CI 65.6 to 78.4) per million children in 2000 to 335.3 (95% CI 332.3 to 338.3) per million children in 2009 (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Trends in age and sex-specific hospital admission rates per million children among children and young people ages 5 to 19 years, for obesity and where obesity was a comorbidity, 2000–2009.

Bariatric surgery

Of the 20,885 children and young people admitted to hospitals in England during the study period, 111 patients had a bariatric surgery procedure performed during 2000 and 2009 and the number increased from one procedure in 2000 to 31 in 2009. Of those 111 patients, 109 were in the 15–19 years age group and only two were in the 10–14 years age group. The majority of these procedures (75.6%, n=84) were performed in girls and the median age was 18 years (Figure 2). Laparoscopic gastric banding was the most commonly performed bariatric surgical procedure, accounting for 36% (n=34) of procedures during the study period.

Figure 2. Number of hospital admissions for bariatric surgery for children and young people ages 13 to 19 years by sex, 2000 to 2009.

“We found that patients undergoing bariatric procedures were mainly girls and the number of these procedures increased substantially during our study period,” the authors write. “While the number of these surgeries started from a very low base of one in the year 2000, and the numbers are still lower than US estimates. The increase is large and suggests that England may be moving towards the greater number of these procedures seen in the US.”
The researchers state that there needs to be a full economic analysis of the cost of managing and treating obesity in children and young people and future research should aim to identify target groups of children with higher prevalence of obesity and investigate how this compares with those treated for obesity-related conditions in hospitals in England.
In addition, they urge further researcher as to whether the publication of national guidelines have impacted on hospital admission patterns for obesity.
Conclusion
“Our findings support emerging evidence that the childhood obesity epidemic may lead to substantial problems of obesity-related disease much sooner in children and young people’s lives than previously expected,” the authors conclude. “With levels of admissions for obesity-related diagnoses rising, there is likely to be increasing demand on health services and also greater use of more radical interventions, such as pharmacological or surgical treatment, as part of efforts to address the increasing trend of obesity that threatens the lives of many children and young people in England and globally.”