Consumer attitudes towards health and sustainability are rapidly changing: including beliefs about what it means to be healthy, what interventions are considered therapeutic, and what is an appropriate site for intervention or treatment. Simultaneously, healthcare institutions and employers are reevaluating the services and benefits that they are able to provide and are forcing more of the cost onto the insured. These factors - plus an aging population, staggering increases in the incidence of chronic diseases, plus the omnipresence of health and medical information available over the Internet - are working together to create a new role for consumers as patients, and a powerful investing opportunity. Physic Ventures sees this convergence as an opportunity to invest at the intersection where "life science meets lifestyle."

A wave of new markets and opportunities is being driven by an unprecedented confluence of economic, social and technological trends resulting in a paradigm shift related to health and sustainable living. These trends include:
 

• THE NEW BIO-CITIZEN - The emergence and adoption of consumer-directed healthcare and wellness management where the distinctions between patient and consumer blur, and the driver of decisions and economic burden shifts from institution to individual: The consumer becomes the center of his or her own "health" universe, taking more and more responsibility for decisions and actions related to managing one's health.
• CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS - Growing interest from a swelling market of Baby Boomers (and others) in their own health and wellbeing, in staying healthy and preventing the onset of disease, in a realization that their diet, exercise regime and overall lifestyle have a considerable impact on their own longevity and quality of life.
• ESCALATING HEALTHCARE COSTS - Rising healthcare costs, due to aging populations and the rapid growth in chronic illnesses such as diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease, which are leading to a lack of survivability of existing healthcare systems.
• SCARCITY OF NATURAL RESOURCES - Global shortage of clean drinking water; rising oil prices; and competition between food, energy and materials for natural feedstocks.
• GREEN GOES MAINSTREAM - Recognition of human impact on the earth's systems and an elementary understanding of the interrelationships between personal and planetary health and sustainability.
• INTEGRATIVE HEALTH - The rapidly rising adoption and trial of complementary and alternative medical approaches to treatment and prevention, giving rise to the advent and emergence of a paradigm for "self-care" driven by a quest for sustained vitality.
• INFORMATION AT YOUR FINGERTIPS - Increasing consumer access to high-quality health information and individual-accessible tools for diagnosis, monitoring, information management and decision making
• CONVERGENCE OF LIFE AND MATERIALS SCIENCES - New technologies and approaches for predictive, preventive and personalized approaches to health management
• NICHE MARKET EXPANSION - Mainstreaming of once niche-oriented products and pursuits such as certified organic foods, hybrid cars, yoga, day spas, acupuncture and "Slow Food."