What Does the Investment Portfolio of JD Vance Tell Us About the Future of Medical Packaging?

JD Vance is widely considered to be an intelligent and analytical politician by the Republican Party. This likely contributed to his selection as the VP nominee by Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. Regardless of political persuasion, there may be much to learn from his investments concerning emerging trends, and the potential impact on medical packaging.

After reviewing and aggregating his investments, here are my three key takeaways on how they may impact the future of medical devices and medical packaging.

1. Decentralization and Point-of-Care Testing (POCT).

JD Vance’s interest in the rapidly emerging category of the decentralization of healthcare might indicate that he anticipates a rapid acceleration in home-based care and next-generation telemedicine.

For those familiar with healthcare, this is not particularly surprising. Market trends show many areas of decentralization, including the decentralization of patient testing, now referred to as Point-of-Care Testing (POCT). This presents a significant opportunity for medical packaging to develop innovative solutions for Point-of-Care Testing (POCT) devices. This will require a substantial shift in our approach to Human Factors Design and simplifying design, also known as Dummy Down Design (DDD).

Related:3 Ways to Reimagine Medical Device Packaging Development

These new POCT devices will also necessitate a higher degree of collaboration with technology platforms and users across a range of physical and mental acuity levels.

2. Patient consumerism.

Some of JD Vance’s portfolio suggests that he understands the new trend of hyper-consumerism. Hyper-consumerism indicates that today’s patients see healthcare as a consumer product.

Consequently, we are witnessing the emergence of new retail models addressing consumers’ desires to eliminate friction, improve transparency, and provide far better experiential value. This calls for new designs in clinical care and, importantly, new training and certification programs that train healthcare providers to deliver a superior consumer experience across the five touchpoints of their healthcare engagement.

This trend will also drive significant improvements in medical and pharmaceutical packaging. Consider the challenge of reading the instructions on a common pain reliever bottle today. We will see the development of entirely new packaging to eliminate “confusion friction,” which will enhance the experiential value of a package while also improving safety and compliance.

3. Automation and efficiency.

There is a significant interest in automation and efficiency. As the healthcare industry seeks to increase access while concurrently reducing costs, improving efficiency through emerging technologies, including Robotic Process Automation (RPA), is essential. A recent McKinsey study indicated that leveraging RPA could reduce human tasks by up to 30%.

Additionally, we will see the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Business Intelligence (BI), and other technologies to anticipate utilization, consumption, and failure potentials, thereby reducing costs and improving output.

Furthermore, we will observe substantial advancements in leveraging data analytics and business analytics to identify waste across the enterprise and at the departmental level.

Needless to say, it’s impossible to truly understand what is in the mind of an investor. These points are simply my interpretation of JD Vance’s publicly listed investments. Whether these areas become integrated into policies in the event of a Trump victory is unclear and beyond the scope of this brief analysis. One thing is certain: these investments align with the overall insights that most investors have regarding healthcare technologies.