Intelligent Medicine Exchange (IMX)™ today announced its plans to launch the first financial exchange focused on the health care economy. IMX has filed for regulatory approval with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to be a Designated Contract Market (DCM) – a futures exchange focused on contracts that will enable individual and institutional market participants to manage risk and invest in multiple components of the health care ecosystem.
Health care represents nearly 20% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), but there is currently no dedicated derivatives market to hedge risk. A barrier to creating these markets in the past has been a lack of reliable data on which to build tradable instruments based on trends in the industry, such as the cost of treating certain diseases and common medical procedures, the ability to invest in certain drugs and more. IMX has developed proprietary, patent-pending cost indexes that will underlie the futures contracts.
James Plante, IMX CEO and co-founder, said: “Health care is the number one economic problem facing the country, and it’s almost 10 times bigger than the oil market but without a corresponding vehicle to manage risk. We now have the data and means to create a trading venue for those whose businesses and livelihoods depend on the health care economy – whether they are suppliers, medical providers such as hospitals or physician groups, insurers or self-insured employers – or investors who want to take a position on the market.” “Health care costs are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. The cost of new drugs, hospital procedures, hospital stays and insurance premiums seem only to go up. We believe IMX will lead to stable and lower prices for consumers and more predictability for drug companies, hospitals, providers and payers as they learn to do what farmers have done for decades – hedge the future.”