The following is an interview with Dr. Joe Duarte, a medical doctor and veteran investor with decades of experience following medical technology innovation. We sat down to discuss the virtual and augmented reality sector, where Dr. Joe and the team at Breakthrough Tech Profits recently made a trio of investment recommendations.

So you’re a medical doctor, an experienced investor, and you have a love for technology—how did all of these things fit together?

I’ve been in medicine for twenty years, and the reason why medicine is still growing and expanding is technology.

And then, as an investor—the money behind investing is the guiding force. It’s what determines which medical technologies will reach doctors and patients.

I do all of these things together because I like being at the cutting edge of medicine. I like finding the areas of growth and then earning profits from these world-changing medical technologies.

The discussion around new virtual reality technologies is heating up. But it seems one thing that no one is talking about are the medical applications — where many remarkable innovations are taking place. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s out there?

I see virtual reality transforming the area of medical training. New techniques can be tested without actually practicing on a human being. Students learn more procedures, and will be able to encounter a much greater number of situations. Virtual reality gets doctors out of textbooks and into situations that more closely parallel real life.

Remote procedures is another big one. Expert doctors in specific areas of medicine will be able to perform procedures all over the world, but they’ll never have to leave their “home” office because they can do everything remotely using virtual reality.

There are already a lot of developments that combine of virtual reality and robotics. Many of these things are still 5 to 10 years off. But the emphasis is there now—it’s just a matter of expanding and building upon what we have today.

What will these developments mean for investors?

Well, I think given where virtual reality is right now; it’s an exciting time… because you can get into companies with general applications for virtual reality. Many of the medical applications I just mentioned will run on these general platforms.

I can’t help but draw a parallel to Apple and the iPhone. Once Apple created the platform that is the iPhone, that paved the way for apps… and the highly specialized uses for the iPhone.

But for virtual reality, this will become even more pronounced. So there are going to be a lot of things that people can look at and explore in this area for some time.

Now, as far as timing goes, when should investors try to get into stocks with exposure to this virtual revolution?

Actually, today there are quite a few options. But the great opportunities require you to dig under a few rocks to find them.

A number of big tech companies are investing in VR, but they’re doing a lot more than just virtual reality. So you have to be careful to weigh how VR plays into the future of the company.

That’s why I recommend looking at a few of the smaller “pure plays” on virtual reality. But even more caution is needed here. So for each one of these small companies it’s important to dig into the financials and assess growth prospects—and then the product line and how managers are handling growth.

So for you, it’s all about growth potential versus investing in one of the giants like Google or Apple?

Yes, the smaller companies out there are attractive because of their growth potential. You’re trying to tap into the major growth areas for this completely new technology.

And it’s very possible to get it. Look at the growth in cell phones as a parallel example…

When cell phone first came out—I don’t want to give my age away, but I remember the first cell phone I ever saw that was almost as big as briefcase… those early days were about connecting with general growth, and then later the specific applications that come from cell phones. We’re of course still exploring many of these applications today.

We already know that virtual reality has a near-limitless number of applications. Business, finance, medicine, nature, entertainment—new virtual potential for everything we already have in reality.

So I expect that we’ll see virtual reality do exactly what cell phones did but in a shorter amount of time. Then we’re going to keep growing and keep expanding since there are so many potential applications. These are truly exciting times.

Editors Note: To learn more about the investments Dr. Joe and the analyst team at Breakthrough Tech Profits are recommending, watch this presentation. Due to the time sensitive nature of this research and specific recommendations, this presentation will come offline at midnight tonight. Click here to view it now.