We’ve nearly finished researching a report on the Top 500 private healthcare operators in Emerging Markets. So what are we learning?

1) There are a surprisingly large number of big operators out there. We’ve identified nearly 50 companies with sales of over $200m.

2) They are going international surprisingly fast. Who would have imagined that the largest Philippino group, The Medical Center, would be planning to roll out 20 clinics across the Philippines? Or that Vitalmex, the big Mexican medical outsourcer, would be looking at moving into Turkey and Thailand, as well as opening in Colombia and Peru?  Lancet, the South African lab group is now in a dozen African countries (its CEO, Peter Cole is speaking at on day 2 of our annual conference). And for every operator who are international now, there are 2-3 times as many who plan to be so in 2016-2017.

3) A surprisingly large number of them are stock market listed. The latest listed groups we’ve uncovered include Shifa International in Pakistan with sales of $70m in 2014.  We’ve found a dozen in Latin America alone. In total, listed companies in private healthcare services headquartered in Emerging Markets have a market capitalisation in excess of US$85bn.

4) Many more are listing now. Take Georgia Healthcare Group, the largest Georgian hospital chain, and Narayana Health, the big Indian hospital group.

4) Unsurprisingly, they are growing fast. Dental groups, in particular, have grown from a handful of offices to 100+ outlets in China and India.  The big Indian lab groups are managing 25-30% sales growth. Many hospital groups are growing at 20% plus.

So what are we producing? The end result of all this effort is a detailed database of all these operators with a corporate profile, sales figures and ownership details. This will give you a complete overview of all the major players in over 50 countries. We will also track all these companies in our news service, Healthcare Nova, where we also produce detailed national surveys – to date we’ve covered China, UAE, Indonesia and South Africa. Mexico follows this month with India in November.  To find out more and to discuss your information needs, call us on 00 44 207 183 3779 or email me at max @healthcareeuropa.com.