Strategy & Study: Changes within the healthcare sector

The entry of digital technologies in the healthcare sector creates enormous financial potential for the biopharma industry. However, it also creates major challenges: A study titled “Driving the future of health” conducted by Strategy&, the strategic consulting firm of PwC, among 120 international senior executives of the biggest biopharma companies forecasts an increase of the global healthcare market volume by 10%, from US$ 10.6 trillion in 2018 to US$ 11.6 trillion by 2030.

Global healthcare expenditure is expected to reach US$ 4.4 trillion by 2030

In future, however, due to the strongly growing share of the population with access to healthcare, a decline in expenditures per patient of 27.5% is expected. On this basis, the operational net margins of currently 25% could significantly decline into negative numbers within the next decade. With regards to the growth in the overall healthcare market, the questioned biopharma executives expect – compared with 2018 – massive shifts in expenditures, mainly in the areas diagnostics (+524%), prevention (+244%), and digital health (+205%) by 2030. The share of care (without medicine) in overall healthcare expenditures, however, will shrink by almost 16%. This equals a decline of round about US$ 1.2 trillion on the global level by 2030.

Among the biopharma executives taking part in the survey, the vast majority is certain that the change for their own industry is imminent. 96% agree that healthcare will be centered on patients / people empowered to prevent diseases rather than seek treatment. Who will receive personalized health solutions in ways that are integrated seamlessly into their daily lives. All of this will be enabled by data and algorithms and provided within a healthcare system that is organized and regulated in an entirely new way. 68% of participants in the survey expect this future vision to become normality by 2030 at the latest.

The questioned biopharma managers also regard technology companies as the drivers of change, whereas they consider the regulators to be the brakemen. Additionally, they consider the establishment of digital awareness, as well as a respective corporate culture as the biggest internal challenge (70%), followed by the development of currently still lacking competences (47%), and overcoming structural obstacles (35%). Externally, they are mainly concerned about regulatory and legal hurdles (71%), even before the question of availability and access rights to the required datasets (37%) as well as ethnical issues (22%).