Zurich Financial Services Group focuses on Nanotechnology in its latest issue of Industry Insight, its online consumer magazine. It defines nanotechnology as the methods of manipulating atoms and molecules to create new structures at scales measured in billionths of a metre. This issue of Industry Insight provides an overview of nanotechnology today – its enormous commercial potential, the unique risk challenges nanotechnology poses, the regulatory environment for nanotechnology, and a look at what Zurich is doing to help its customers understand and manage the potential risk.

In the current economic gloom, it is very tempting to write another run-of-the-mill article about how the credit crisis is affecting the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare domain as a whole. However, since those issues have been covered and belabored threadbare in most other journals, this article will focus on some of the other interesting things that are happening in the industry.

Europe is the second largest market for HIV/AIDS therapeutics after the US market. However, it is also a very challenging market for pharmaceutical manufacturers because of the differences in policies across the region. The European HIV/AIDS market poses unique challenges to the manufacturers as well as the public health authorities.

Increasing costs, a limited drug pipeline and the impeding loss of patent coverage for ‘blockbuster’ drugs are changing the landscape of pharmaceutical science. Certain business strategies will need to be employed to overcome these challenges.

In-vitro diagnostics is in the midst of a major change. Last year, the IVD industry was the centre of media attention as it witnessed one of the largest industry consolidations within the healthcare sector. The entry of medical technology giant Siemens and the aspirations of GE to enter this market, have heightened this interest, as the IVD industry is traditionally considered a low-profit business in the life sciences space.

Several procedures such as culture techniques, Immunoassays/Serology and Fluorescent In Situ Hybridisation (FISH) have been used to detect disease agents for many years. However amplification technologies such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) have been shown to be very popular amongst end users and are creating a great amount of interest in the market place.