Top 5 Predictions for the Global Healthcare Industry Post COVID-19

July 16, 2020 – Frost and Sullivan’s recent analysis, Post-Pandemic Global Healthcare Market Outlook, 2020, forecasts that 2020 will be an unforgiving but transformational year for the healthcare industry. As the world grapples with a global emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry should expect to see a drop in growth from 5.3 to 0.6 percent in 2020, with revenues remaining below the $2 trillion mark.

"While the life sciences segment seems to be surviving and thriving, in certain scenarios, medical technologies and imaging are expected to be hit the hardest. Elective procedures being on hold and delayed or prolonged procurement of capital equipment will have a negative impact on revenue, from $413.9 billion to $377.1 billion for medical devices and from $31.5 billion to $18.1 billion for imaging equipment,” said Unmesh Lal, transformational health program manager, Frost and Sullivan. “Additionally, with telehealth transforming care delivery and health IT enhancements in analytics and interoperability, digital health will continue to thrive at a growth rate of 7.9 percent in 2020.”

While the short-term demand for COVID testing and the race to find a vaccine intensifies, governments will re-allocating budgets to finance healthcare services and assessing the feasibility of immunity passports, mass vaccinations and scaling up of contact tracing, Lal said.  

"Moving forward, healthcare IT companies such as Microsoft, Optum, Intel and AWS are betting big on enterprise-grade AI platforms that predict pandemics, forecast patient volume across providers, authenticate reimbursement and drive general well-being of the insured population through medication management and self-care enablement," Lal said.

In light of the lessons learned from the pandemic and the changing economic and business scenario, Frost & Sullivan has re-visited predictions, identified top growth opportunities and analyzed risk-mitigation measures adopted by companies to survive the remainder of 2020, including:

 1. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Indian telehealth markets have reached a tipping point with growth of more than 200 percent during the pandemic. Virtual consultations by healthcare professionals will become the mainstream care delivery model post-pandemic. However, reimbursement, training physicians, and platform scalability will be the key to recalibrating telehealth.

  2. Informatics and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions addressing workflow automation and operational analytics will witness 100 percent growth in 2020. For instance, GE Healthcare's industry-first, FDA-cleared Critical Care Suite AI tool will help radiologists prioritize critical cases. The resumption in imaging for the backlog of elective procedures in Q3 and Q4 will result in teleradiology and AI-based solutions gaining from new investments. Scale-up in capacity, flexible payment options, and redistribution of the workload will accelerate partnerships.

  3. The United States will have an excess of 100,000 ventilators, while Western Europe will purchase another 30,000 to 50,000 ventilators through the end of 2020. This uneven distribution across regions will redefine non-hospital and home critical care models, while embedded analytics systems will revive the mature monitoring devices segment post-pandemic. Resmed has launched a remote monitoring solution for ventilators in the U.S. and Europe through its cloud-based AirView platform for home care.

   4. Traditional models of in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) testing in a healthcare setting are unable to meet unprecedented demand. By the end of 2020, the $5 billion point-of-care testing for the infectious diseases market will drive the impending change in service models, with alternate testing sites like pharmacies becoming permanent ecosystem participants. CVS and Walgreens have begun building the infrastructure to offer IVD testing at their locations.

   5. By the end of 2020, 33 percent of global clinical trials will be disrupted, putting $3 billion in new product revenues at risk. Disrupted clinical trials and the subsequent delay in drug launches will pave the way for fully virtual trials, and hybridization of patient recruitment, retention, and monitoring will become all-pervasive.
 
Post-Pandemic Global Healthcare Market Outlook, 2020 is part of Frost and Sullivan’s global Transformational Health Growth Partnership Service program.
 
Frost & Sullivan helps investors, corporate leaders and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, mega trends, new business models and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. 

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