The inaugural HealthInvestor Asia Summit took place at the Singapore Exchange on Thursday 27 October.

Sutat Chew, head of equities and fixed income unit at SGX, said that healthcare is a “key sector” for the exchange, with more than 30 healthcare firms listed on it. “Today, these healthcare companies that are listed both on SGX Mainboard and Catalist, the sponsor-supervised platform, have a combined market value of over US$25 billion, more than 10 times of what it was just 10 years ago,” he said.

Healthcare companies with a focus on technology, strong and transparent communications and a breadth of experience at board level have a promising future on Asia’s capital markets, according to a panel of experts meeting in Singapore on 27 October.

"As far as healthcare is concerned we continue to see opportunity across the landscape," said Abrar Mir, managing partner, Quadria Capital, speaking at the HealthInvestor Asia 2016 Summit. But, he emphasised, that the landscape is changing. “The centre of gravity is shifting from the West to the East".

Achieving a public listing remains the ultimate goal for the vast majority of healthcare entrepreneurs in Asia, according to one leading banker. Andrew Teo, who is joint lead for Singapore coverage at OCBC, said that despite a spike in private equity activity in the healthcare sector “for most entrepreneurs, 90% of the time the endgame is being a publicly listed company".

“The pipeline looks robust, coming from a variety of sectors, but I think Catalist is going to become a lot more international," said Mohamed Nasser Ismail, senior vice president, head of equity capital market (SMEs), head of capital market development, SGX.

Foreign investment in China’s top tier cities is “reaching saturation point" said Jiadi Yu, principal investment officer at International Finance Corporation. Speaking at HIA’s inaugural Summit in Singapore, Yu said that investors are now being “forced… to come down the market" as big international firms such as Parkway and Raffles dominate the healthcare space in top tier cities.

Healthcare “regulations are not developing fast enough" for Asian healthcare to adapt effectively to the region’s ageing demographics, argued Susann Roth, senior social development specialist, Asian Development Bank. Speaking at HealthInvestor Asia’s inaugural Summit, Roth spoke of how in Cambodia, regulation professionals are “still using paper dossiers" for example and nothing is recorded electronically despite the fact technology would make their jobs easier. She also pointed to the increased use of personalised medicine by wealthy individuals without any data analysis being made into how effective these medicines actually are.

“It is possible to talk about the health insurance market in Asia, but it is not fair to call it mature," said Thalia Georgiou, founder, Asia Care Group, in a lively closing session at the HealthInvestor Asia Summit in Singapore.