Don’t let the name fool you.
“The Web Summit” sounds vague and dull, but it happens to be the largest technology conference in the world. And after spending four days at this year’s event in Lisbon, Portugal, I can tell you that the buzz there was anything but dull.
Here’s just one example: More than one world-renowned healthcare expert claimed that cancer will be cured in the next 10 years.
The world has dreamed for that day, and it’s getting closer. I am not a medical expert, but I study the future as part of my investment research. To paraphrase my favorite analogy from hockey great Wayne Gretzky: We want to skate to where the puck will be, not where it has been. That’s why I go to important conferences like the Web Summit. And the futurist part of me absolutely believes that a cancer cure is achievable within the next decade.
If the experts and I are correct, just think about how that changes society and peoples’ lives. And think about how much money will be made by smart investors in the right stocks.
I left the Web Summit with detailed research and analysis on several important investment themes for the next decade. I will share a few of the biggest ones with you in the coming days, and we’ll start with the most prominent theme of all — the future of healthcare.
This was one of my favorite themes even before the summit, but I came away more excited than ever about what’s coming and how big it will be.
Most of the companies at the conference referred to this as “MedTech” — short for medical technology. Think about the broader technology revolution taking place right now, and now apply the breakthroughs to the healthcare industry. From artificial intelligence (AI) to genomics to robots, the number of possible new discoveries in the next 10+ years is endless.
Artificial intelligence (AI) came up in nearly every conversation about healthcare and medicine. One of the heads of Massachusetts General Hospital — one of the best hospitals in the world — brought up a great point when discussing AI and the future of cancer treatment. Constance Lehman is also a Harvard professor, and she explained that medical school students are not incentivized to take risk. They are trained to take the conservative approach. This results in very little outside-the-box thinking, which in turn is a drag on innovation in medicine.
That is changing with AI now becoming a force in healthcare. AI will help detect diseases early and, better yet, identify specific treatments for each patient.
We have always had an enormous amount of data on patients and disease. Unfortunately, we lacked the manpower to organize and analyze the information. With AI, millions of data points can be analyzed in a matter of minutes — something that would have taken years in the past.
AI will also accelerate drug discovery, another hot topic at the conference. I saw more than 10 companies, both public and private, that are using AI to help with drug discovery. Computers running AI can analyze years of data on diseases in minutes, and deep learning can go as far as testing possible drugs in simulated studies.
Even more exciting is the end result — precision medicine. Treatments will be based on your genomic makeup and how medicines react with your body, increasing effectiveness and decreasing side effects.
That brings us to preventative healthcare driven by genomics. We’re approaching the day when there will be risk-based screening for everyone to help determine what ailments each of us is susceptible to. The screening will be based on the advances in genetic testing.
The mapping of even one human genome was not possible 20 years ago. The very first one took almost 15 years and cost more than $2.5 billion. Today, it can be done in a few hours … and for less than $500.
Imagine where we will be in just 10 more years.
I predict that every person will have access to genetic testing and preventative screening. I will even go further and say that health insurance companies will require genetic testing for all customers.
Robotics was yet another big topic at the Web Summit. Robots and automation are already in the world of health care. In fact, one of the first stocks I bought for clients when I launched my money management firm, Penn Financial Group, was Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG), maker of the da Vinci robotic surgical system. Since 2005, the stock is up nearly 4,200%!
In the next decade, robotics will continue to be integrated with medical treatment, which will enable dramatic advances. Think about rural areas and even emerging countries that do not have access to top-notch surgeons. Now surgery can be done remotely using robotics. A world-renowned surgeon in New York City could operate on a patient half way around the world!
The more I look into what’s coming and how the multi-trillion-dollar health care industry will change, the more excited I get about the potential to change the lives of both patients and investors.
This is an area you need to invest in while it’s still early enough to make life-changing returns.
Matthew McCall left Wall Street to actually help investors — by getting them into the world’s biggest, most revolutionary trends BEFORE anyone else. The power of being “first” gave Matt’s readers the chance to bank +2,438% in Stamps.com (STMP), +1,523% in Ulta Beauty (ULTA) and +1,044% in Tesla (TSLA), just to name a few. Click here to see what Matt has up his sleeve now. Matt does not directly own the aforementioned securities.
