Pub. 3 2013 Issue 1

7 Mining Focus continued on page 9 group in 2010. The only place with a decrease was tiny Rhode Island. What do you need if you have a population with many elderly people? The answer is medical care, and lots of it. You also need new ways of dealing with age-associated illnesses. The medical industry in the U.S. is going through a huge change. It’s anyone’s guess what it will look like in ten years, but we know already that the move will be toward containing costs, discouraging stays in the hospital, and either delivering care in a patient’s own home or in nursing homes or hospices when home is not a possibility. After all, most people would prefer to be in their own place than in some institution. The expectation is that home health care products are going to be an increasingly vital segment of the medical device industry, especially if there is a shift away from pharmaceuticals toward other methods of delivering medical care. Utah is uniquely positioned to be at the forefront of two industries, mining and medical devices, for the foreseeable future. Just how big is Utah when it comes to medical devices? The fact is, Utah is number one in the U.S., even when compared against California and Massachusetts. Consider the statistics: • Utah has more than 600 life-science companies and 26,000 employees. Researcher Brigham Mellor says that eight of these 600 companies have created almost 3,700 jobs since 2007. • Of these companies, 116 specialize in making a variety of medical devices. For example, Utah is involved in buildingMRI and ultrasound equipment; electromedical endoscopic equipment; ECGs, hear ing aids, laborator y equipment, and pacemakers; and surgical appliances, instruments, and supplies. In 2011 and 2012, the Milken Institute ranked Utah number 6 overall for its performance as one of the best performing cities when compared against the 200 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. During another Milken study, when the analysts at the Milken Institute looked at the size of Utah’s population and the number of life-science based businesses that are located here, they ranked Utah first in the western U.S. And after a similar analysis that looked at industry growth in general, they ranked Utah second.