BOSTON –- There's a new group of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) available for investors to consider, but the jury's still out on just how viable is the market they're focused on.

The new ETFs care health-care stocks into sub-sectors such as cardiology, diagnostics and patient-care services.

New York-based financial services form XShares Advisors LLC launched its first ETFs — "HealthShares" — on the New York Stock Exchange last week.

Some analysts, reports MarketWatch, say these "high-specialized" EFT "would revolutionize the way traders invest in as volatile and heavily regulated health-care sector, in which drug breakthroughs or failed clinical trials can lead to gut-wrenching one-day stock swings."

Still others wonder where the demand will come from to buy and trade these new "thin market niche" health-care ETFs.

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One analyst opined that the new ETFs "should court plenty of volatility and risk."

XShares Chief Executive and co-founder Bill Kridel told MarketWatch he estimated the health-care industry's portion of the national economy has doubled over the past week and now accounts for about 16 percent of the GDP. Kridel offered two reasons why the new healthcare sub-sector ETFs will do well.

First, he said, the funds allow investors to take a position in an entire sub-sector like cardio devices, rather than choosing an individual company.

Second, he said XShare's HealthShares product "solves diversification problems" he asserts have "plagued sector ETFs tracking market capitalization-weighted indexes, such as health-care funds that wind up dominated by Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co."

Kridel said XShares has registered 20 ETFs with regulators and plans to list the remainder soon.

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