Market Size and Economics for Biosensors

The breadth and depth of biosensor applications have resulted in a 25% increase in the world biosensor market prediction made as early as August 2002 by Kalorama Information for the year 2005 of $2.3 billion to $2.9 billion. Though medical applications remain the major area of application, biosensors are gradually penetrating a wide variety of non-medical areas. Earlier predictions indicated that the medical application was around 90% of the total biosensor market, which includes clinical applications for diabetes, cholesterol, and coagulation monitoring. However, medical applications of biosensors are now down to around 60%. These changes are atributed to the rapidly advancing technologies and to some serious business challenges. The biosensor field has expanded dramatically in the past 45 years or so since the first demonstration of a biosensor application in 1962. Self-diagnosis of blood glucose levels by diabetes sufferers, however, remains the dominant area of biosensor application. The increased investment in new laboratories is essential to permit the application research required for determining the commercial applicability of biosensors. Different trends and models for collaboration between different entities are being noticed at the present time. Some of these trends are presented here. Incubators are springing up wherein scholarly research at universities may be gradually turned into or groomed to becoming successful business ventures. In effect, the future expansion of biosensor markets will depend on the balance between market opportunities and technical and/or financial obstacles. Different examples of biosensor companies along with their product and what analyte it detects have been described. Most, if not all, of the examples have been selected at random to provide an overall perspective of the biosensors that have been or are in the process of being commercialized.