争抢全球18万亿美元大蛋糕， 中国有望能独占鳌头

英国著名医学杂志《柳叶刀》刊登的一篇报告称，目前世界各国在医疗领域的消费接近8万亿美元。三家顶级医疗研究中心——美国西雅图的健康指标及评估研究院、哈佛陈曾熙公共卫生学院和世界银行集团的数据科学家预计，到2040年该消费额将翻倍，增至18万亿美元。

如此庞大的消费会给各国人民和政府带来挑战，具体形式目前难以预见。但面对该挑战有一个国家可能比大多数国家表现得好，那就是中国。

下月《财富》杂志将在广州举办国际科技头脑风暴大会，上周末我花了很多时间查看参与创新大赛的中国初创公司，发现其中约有五分之一公司都在努力解决医疗健康领域的问题，或者满足该领域市场的需求。而且各家初创公司的独创能力令人惊叹。

我不会透露最看好哪些公司，但不得不说，这些努力创业的年轻科学家提出了一些非常有创意的解决方法，可以避免一些常见的手术感染，处理针对某些抗体药物的抗药反应，改进细胞疗法的基因载体，帮助视觉受损的病患“看见”他人的面部，更好地感知环境，对肺部和其他人体器官难以分辨的部位做影像处理，提高遗传风险分析水平，提升医院流程效率。这些聪明的初创公司在研发新型激光器、新材料和新诊断方法，还有更高效也更节省成本的新策略。

还有一点很明显：在中国，商业创意从概念到走向市场的时间明显比全球其他地区短，至少看上去是这样。12月1日即将出版的《财富》杂志上，美国《时代》集团国际编辑钱科雷撰文称，在中国，创新出现的速度超乎想象，因为政府集中力量，大力推动本土科技行业的投资，涉及机器人到人工智能等多个领域。

钱科雷写道，虽然过去数十年里美国科技业领先全球，但未来几十年，美国科技巨头可能面临威胁。对此，美国政界某些人已经敲响警钟。再过20年左右，医疗领域会成为18万亿美元的市场，以我对中国创业者的判断，以后该领域的竞争定会白热化。（财富中文网）

译者：Pessy

审校：夏林

The nations of the world now spend nearly $8 trillion on healthcare, according to a report in The Lancet. By 2040, say data scientists at three leading health research centers—Seattle’s Institute for Heath Metrics and Evaluation, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the World Bank Group—that bill will more than double, to $18 trillion.

The sheer enormity of this expense will challenge citizens and governments in ways we can’t begin to predict. But one nation seems to be getting out in front of that challenge better than most—and that’s China.

I spent much of the weekend reviewing China-based startup companies that are competing in an innovation contest that Fortune is hosting at our inaugural Brainstorm Tech Internationalconference in Guangzhou, China, next month. More than a fifth of them are focused on solving a problem, or meeting a substantial unmet need, in the healthcare realm. And the ingenuity of these companies is incredible.

I won’t reveal yet who my favorites are, but I will say that these young scientist-founders came up with very creative solutions for preventing infections in some common surgeries, tackling resistance in targeted antibody drugs, improving gene vectors for cell therapies, helping the vision-impaired “see” faces and better read their environments, imaging hard-to-see spots in the lungs and other organs, improving genetic risk analysis, and expediting the logistical operations of hospitals. These clever startups are developing new lasers, new materials, new diagnostics, and new strategies for efficiency and cost saving.

What’s also clear is that the time from concept to market is notably shorter in China than it is in much of the rest of the world—or at least it sure seems that way. Innovation is happening there in hyperspeed—and part of that, as Time Inc. International Editor Clay Chandler explains in the Dec. 1 issue of Fortune, is due to a big, concentrated push by the Chinese government to invest in developing home-grown tech industries, from robotics to A.I. (Please subscribe here, if you don’t already—and give a subscription to a loved one for the holidays!)

As Clay reports, the sudden revelation that America’s uncontested tech prowess, after generations of global leadership, may be under threat in the next couple of decades has raised alarm bells in some quarters of Washington. And judging from my introduction to Chinese innovators in the health sector—which, as I said, could be an $18 trillion market in just 20 or so years—that’s one area where the competition’s clearly heating up.