What are the key trends shaping the life sciences and health landscape?

As LCP’s health team reaches its five-year anniversary, Dr Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard reflects on the successes of the team and looks ahead to the key trends that will continue to shape the sector over the next five years.

LCP Health Analytics launched five years ago, and in that time our team has grown in its expertise, knowledge and work. Our mission remains the same; to help shift healthcare systems from being importers of illness to exporters of health to help them prevent disease, promote wellbeing, and create healthier populations that benefit society. 

In the last five years we have been involved in highly influential work. Our work with NICE, utilising the Discover dataset, revealed patterns of comorbidity in type 2 diabetes patients. We have also worked with former Pensions Minister and LCP Partner Steve Webb on work around economic inactivity — exploring the link between poor health and the rise in people leaving the workforce. The view externally was that more people were choosing to retire early, but over three years and three papers, our data showed that ill health was in fact the driving factor. More recently, we’ve developed a new approach, the “fiscal value of medicine,” to quantify how health interventions can deliver savings and value for the wider economy. 

We aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo and as a team with growing expertise and capabilities we know that to tackle the healthcare challenges of tomorrow we need to understand and focus on the key trends in the sector. We believe there are four areas to address in the coming years that will radically transform healthcare.

Health equity 

The growth in inequalities in life expectancy and health outcomes driven by deprivation, ethnicity and geography has a big ripple effect on and across society.   

The link between poorer health outcomes, increased multimorbidity and poor economic and wider societal outcomes has also become clearer.  

Whilst the largest impact on health inequalities is likely to come from public health initiatives, the life sciences sector has a substantial role to play. There are two key challenges that the sector can make commitments and contributions towards. Multimorbidity is increasing and embedding inequalities in health as life expectancy increases, and a key factor here is prevention of the onset of chronic diseases and then prevention of the negative impacts of living with multimorbidity. 

Pharmaceutical companies can also play an important role in demonstrating how their technologies can improve health equity. This includes both embedding health equity into evidence generation strategies as well as using quantitative methods to demonstrate the equity impacts of medicines or technologies using methods such as Distributional Cost Effectiveness analysis. We are proud to be convening a first-of-its-kind collaboration between HTA bodies and industry to help drive tractable progress here.  

The broader value of healthcare  

Population health has a significant impact on economy and society and it is clear that economic inactivity is becoming an increasing issue. Healthcare innovations can keep people in employment or support the economically inactive in returning to work. This benefits economies in terms of both improved net productivity as well as reduced welfare costs. 

At the moment Governments and payers focus on pretty narrow measures of good value for money which includes cost savings to the healthcare system and outcomes on an individual level. A more holistic approach to this, linked to the wider economic and social benefits of good health is essential.

There are ways to do this, notably developing evidence to better show this link, capture the impact of healthcare interventions on caregivers and patients themselves and model potential impacts of interventions on wait lists and linking this to patient, healthcare system and societal outcomes.

Ultimately, getting this right this will require collaboration across industry, academia and HTA bodies to move towards a more holistic assessment. 

AI and automation  

The growth of AI in the last couple of years has already had a big impact. In UK hospitals, for example, AI tools are now used to help interpret brain scans for stroke patients. AI’s ability to support administrative tasks is also advancing rapidly, with digital scribes being trialled to automate notetaking in consultations. These developments are helping clinicians to work more efficiently and focus on patient care.

Over the next few years the role of AI and automation will continue to grow. Aside from efficiencies in back-office functions such as logistics, scheduling and record management, AI will play a big role in drug discovery.  A milestone was reached recently when the first medicine designed using generative AI entered phase two trials – an early but exciting sign of what’s possible.

Anti-obesity drug revolution 

Obesity can lead to many complications such as heart disease, strokes and type 2 diabetes. The revolution in anti-obesity medication is a gamechanger, but there are challenges for life science companies in securing favourable market access because many payers are yet to fully recognise their broad value in both primary and secondary prevention.

Developing comprehensive commercial strategies that align clinical development, pricing, and market access approaches are increasingly important alongside crafting evidence generation strategies and generating real-world evidence that addresses payer concerns and demonstrates the full value of obesity treatments. 

Looking to the future  

There are new trends to navigate that may seem to be overwhelming: however technology and data provide opportunities to help make societies stronger and more resilient to health challenges.   

As a team we have been able to differentiate ourselves in the market, by focusing on the macro healthcare issues of today, and building those as specialisms. We look forward to helping to shape the next five years and would love to hear from you if you are interested in working with a team addressing the key questions of tomorrow.