Futurist meets fund manager: is healthcare on life support?

Citywire has brought together two incredibly knowledgeable experts to approach the healthcare sector from radically different angles. One is Citywire AAA fund manager Paul Jourdan, manager of the TB Amati UK Smaller Companies fund. The other is Mark Stevenson, an author, consultant and futurologist who has been a popular speaker at Citywire events. With New Model Adviser editor Will Robins leading the discussion, the pair talk about cost of keeping people healthy and treating the sick, the breakthroughs certain companies have achieved and the inefficiencies others have allowed to build up. The three discuss the need for sweeping systems change and the dilemma facing politicians in the pandemic. ‘We should not assume we will have a vaccine for this’, says Jourdan. Given there are no guarantees of a vaccine for Covid-19, politicians will have to take tough decisions and start a much more honest conversation with the public. Meanwhile, says Stevenson, if we tried to deal with every disease deadly to humans in the word right now it would take us 400 years, at the current rate at which we develop drugs.
But the eyes of the world are on the healthcare sector like never before. Government health systems and the businesses that deliver medicine, machinery and vaccines are under incredible pressure to deliver a solution to the Covid-19 pandemic. Will it succeed? Is it even fit for purpose? And how might this crisis change it, and healthcare investing, forever?