Nanomedicine today has branched out in hundreds of different research directions, each of them embodying the key insight that the ability to structure materials and devices at the molecular scale can eventually bring enormous immediate benefits in the research and practice of medicine.
Many approaches to nanomedicine being pursued today are already close enough to fruition that their successful development is almost inevitable, and their subsequent incorporation into valuable medical diagnostics or clinical therapeutics is highly likely and may occur soon. However, the market for nanomedical products is currently very fragmented and is at best a niche market when compared with the whole medical market.