Dive Brief:
-
A new report from PwC’s Health Research Institute (HRI) predicts that five major industry trends will change the balance in healthcare spending over the next ten years.
-
Financing and payment are expected to see disruption with new entrants impacting market share, the report argued.
-
Traditional care delivery, which currently dominates healthcare spending, is expected to decrease while future growth is projected in the areas of consumer decision-making platforms and support, wellness, and managing value-based care.
Dive Insight:
It's no secret the healthcare landscape is seeing the five trends outlined in the report, though what is new is the report's perspective on how their "collision of forces" will reshape the industry landscape.
The identified forces are:
- Consumerism
- Value-based care
- Technological advances and digitalization
- Decentralization of care
- Surge in interest in wellness
The trends can be expected to drive industry players, whether new or established, to reconsider their business models, the report says. That in itself is a move once virtually unthinkable in healthcare, with its independent business silos that have done relatively little until now to evolve like other industries.
HRI identified the new health ecosystem as being comprised of five markets: care delivery; diagnostics and therapeutics; financing and payment; platforms and support; and wellness and health management.
It determined that those markets likely to see the most growth will be those positioned to exploit the shift to value-based care: diagnostics and therapeutics, platforms and support, and wellness. Meanwhile, care delivery will continue to go down due to innovations such as virtual health.
Among its advice is to create or capitalize on emerging marketspace--virtual space to bring together various healthcare buyers and sellers--which is essentially so far a void in healthcare. It also stresses consumer segmenting to understand what motivates each consumer group, and thinking beyond the obvious when it comes to wellness, toward things like apps and analytics rather than weight loss programs.
Perhaps above all else, the report points toward data analyses and sharing as "the constants" across the emerging ecosystem, and stresses the need to be open to cultural changes and mental shifts.