Alternative Healthcare's 5 Sleeper Business Trends
Which of these five sleeper trends in the alternative healthcare industry can either be a boon or a bust to your business model? This article raises some important questions you should ask when you are thinking of growing your company.
1. What do you think of the Methuselah Lifespan Effect? More of us have the possibility to add 20 years to our lifetime. Imagaine the impact this will have on society if more people live to be over 100. In addition to the issue of how this will impact medical costs, it raises a personal concern about the quality of life one can have at such an advanced age. Are you excited or dreading the prospect of living to be 100 based on reasonable projections of your health lifestyle?
2. How could hazardous metal detection impact you and your family? Many people automatically think mercury or lead when they read this. But you will quickly learn that there is a whole range of heavy metals that you were not even aware of. Enough people are concerned about this exposure to personally pay to gain knowledge and see what medical follow-up may be needed.
3. What is in your personalized medical profile? How much money do you think people are paying per person and in aggregate for DNA profiles? People are doing this because they want to know more about family health issues and propensities that may impact the quality of their senior years.
4. How many nanotech applications are included as a subassembly or component of new emerging products? Has the widely touted but embarrassingly slow-to-implement field finally arrived? It appears that converging efforts with materials management and the huge amount of prior investments are beginning to reach a tipping point whereby nanotech-enabled products are becoming viable in a range of both high-tech and low tech products.
5. What is behind the growth of the raw food industry, which is a subset of the organic foods industry? When was the last time you looked at the profile of organic foods customers and witnessed the growing appeal of eating naturally grown food? At what price will raw foods become more mainstream in its appeal over conventionally grown food?
For those who now see the usefulness of periodically using a blue sky attitude toward trends that can either help or hurt your business, you are now ready to consider some of the areas briefly outlined above.
Copyright Gary W Patterson 2008
About the Author Gary W. Patterson, FiscalDoctor, has advised over 200 companies across traditional and emerging industries to help improve profitability, reengineer business models, and strengthen or gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. http://www.FiscalDoctor.com or blog, http://www.FiscalClinic.com | 
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