Medtech Forecast for 2002

Originally Published MX January/February 2002

MARKET ANALYSIS

Medtech Forecast for 2002

When the winds of change are blowing, it’s best to have a whole crew of weathermen on board.

Steve Halasey and Flora Nguyen

In the waning days of 2001, the buzz among economists and market analysts was that the year's recession had bottomed out and that full economic recovery would follow soon.

According to many economists, the evidence in favor of a speedy recovery for the U.S. economy seemed to be all around us: rapidly rebounding public confidence, historically low interest rates and petroleum prices, and no signs of inflation. Analysts seemed just as eager for the start of a new bull market, declaring that small-cap growth stocks were likely to be the big winners in the early phases of the market recovery. Nearly all such economy watchers projected that recovery would be in full swing by the middle of 2002.

Inevitably, that's good news for medtech manufacturers-and especially for the many small, entrepreneurial companies whose survival depends upon access to investment funding of various