Thoughts from the Centre
A personal take on topical issues impacting the Healthcare and Life Sciences sector powered by Deloitte’s UK Centre for Health Solutions.
Some healthtech investors are shifting from growth to value
By Adnan Qamar, consulting managing director, and Steve Gabster, senior manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Healthcare technology, or healthtech, is any technology, including medical devices, IT systems and software, algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and blockchain, designed to support healthcare organisations.[1] These technologies are an integral part of modern healthcare. This week’s blog which first appeared as a Center for Health Solution’s Health Forward blog, shares insights from our US colleagues analysis of healthtech investment and market trends to identify the themes and patterns that are attracting healthtech investment. It explores the recent market trend towards quality and value alongside six priority areas for healthtech investors.
World Mosquito Day: could scientific innovations deliver a malaria-free future?
By Márcia Costa, Manager, Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions
On 20 August 1897, British doctor Sir Ronald Ross proved that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes. World Mosquito Day is celebrated on 20 August each year to raise awareness of the dangers posed by mosquito-borne diseases and the urgent need for investment and political commitment to eradicate these diseases. This year's theme is 'Accelerating the fight against malaria for a more equitable world'. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that malaria, in 2022 alone, affected almost 250 million people and killed some 608,000, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.[1] Climate change also poses a significant risk in increasing the transmission of malaria and could increase the inequity of impact across the globe. This week’s blog explores the inequitable high burden of malaria the current approach to reducing this burden and some of the exciting innovations that could prove to be game changers in creating a malaria-free world.
The role of innovative R&D and GenAI in helping to tackle AMR
By Márcia Costa and Emily May, Managers, Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions
Antimicrobials have drastically changed modern medicine and extended the average human lifespan by 23 years.[1] However, over the past 30 years there has been a gradual decline in antibiotic R&D with rising levels of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) posing a significant global threat to human health.[2] In 2019, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that AMR was linked to around five million deaths and if this trend continues, annual AMR-related deaths could reach 10 million by 2050, with an estimated cost of $100 trillion to the global economy.[3] Although 16 new antibiotics have been approved since 2017, many pathogens still have no treatments as most new antibiotics are associations or improvements of existing molecules, originally discovered over 30 years ago.[4] There is therefore an urgent need for more innovative mechanisms of action and new chemical classes of antimicrobials. This blog explores recent developments in incentivising antibiotic R&D, the current R&D pipeline and the potential of GenAI in identifying new therapies and reducing the risk of AMR.
Closing the world’s breastfeeding gap: How do we build a supportive breastfeeding framework for all?
By Sinaida Cherubin, Consultant, Deloitte and Márcia Costa, Manager, Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions
World Breastfeeding Week (WBW), is held each year in the first week of August to promote the benefits of breastfeeding and its adoption worldwide. Substantial evidence shows that breastfeeding is one of the most effective ways to ensure child health, development and survival. A 2016 Lancet study showed that more than 820,000 children’s lives could be saved per year if all children younger than 24 months were optimally breastfed.1 While globally the number of infants under six months who are breast fed has increased by more than 10 per cent to 48 percent in the past decade, 52 per cent are not.2 Although some women might not be able or willing to breastfeed due to difficulties in establishing breastfeeding and other socio-cultural issues, many could breastfeed for longer if they had the right support. This year’s WBW theme is ‘Closing the Gap: Breastfeeding Support for All’ and focuses on how families, societies, communities and health workers can support breastfeeding.3 This week, we explore the benefits of breastfeeding and global strategies to support new mothers.
Midyear Global Outlook for Life Science: Three disruptive forces may impact life sciences beyond 2024
By Vicky Levy, Global Life Sciences sector leader, Deloitte
This week, we are sharing with you a blog that initially appeared as a US Health Forward blog by our Global Life Sciences and Healthcare Industry Leader Vicky Levy. This blog shares her assessment of our 2024 Global Life Sciences Sector Outlook and the three main potential disrupters that are driving change in the industry in 2024.
Activating health equity: The vital role of Medical Affairs
By Elizabeth Hampson, Partner and lead for Deloitte’s Health Equity Institute Europe, and Zara King, Senior Manager, Monitor Deloitte
Health equity is the fair and just opportunity for everyone to fulfil their human potential in all aspects of health and wellbeing. While the importance of addressing health equity is now more widely acknowledged, significant gaps in outcomes remain, including disparities in life expectancy within and across countries, lack of diversity in clinical trials, and over two million people globally with no access to essential medicines.1 Achieving health equity requires life science and healthcare organisations to deliberately design and build systems that advance equity as a priority. Medical Affairs professionals are uniquely placed to lead and shape this agenda, by bringing insights into the organisation, galvanising medical leaders to address society’s most pressing equity challenges, and shaping the wider ecosystem in which they operate. This blog presents the key takeaways from a roundtable Deloitte held with Medical Affairs experts discussing how their role in advancing health equity could evolve.
Governing patient data is much more than data protection – it’s about trust
By Jon Shingleton, Senior Manager and Claire McInnes, Manager, Health and Care Information Governance Specialists, Deloitte
Being able to share patient data is fundamental to delivering patient care, enabling medical innovation, and improving population health outcomes. This is particularly acute within the new NHS Integrated Care Systems (ICS), whose success pivots on the effective and prompt sharing of patient data between their component organisations. Information Governance (IG) is all too often blamed for preventing patient data sharing, especially for purposes beyond providing direct care. It’s true that health and care IG is complicated – it’s a latticework of laws, frameworks and expectations spanning data protection, confidentiality, records management and information security. However, deployed effectively and robustly, IG frameworks can be an enabler, quickly demonstrating that data sharing is lawful, ethical and secure, and unlocking access to groundbreaking data insight. To be effective, IG frameworks need to be founded on one simple principle – trust.
Shaping pharma in 2024: Innovation, cell and gene therapies, and women’s health
By Namrita Negi, head, Life Sciences Knowledge Center Deloitte Consulting LLP, and Alex Blair, senior manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Our blog this week appeared first as a US Health Forward blog, and explores three trends that are shaping pharma companies halfway through 2024.
Creating a global climate-resilient health workforce
By Dr Elizabeth Baca, Managing Director, Deloitte Consulting LLP
In 2023, our report ‘Time to change: Sustaining the UK’s clinical workforce’ we highlighted that building and maintaining a productive and resilient clinical workforce is complex and requires long-term planning, political commitment, and adequate investment in recruitment, retention and training. However, we found that a decade of unrelenting increases in demand, exacerbated by three years of being at the heart of the COVID-19 response, had taken a serious toll on the physical and mental health of the workforce, with rising levels of staff burnout, growing levels of attrition and deterioration in goodwill. We also acknowledged that achieving a resilient, sustainable and affordable workforce is an enormous challenge. Today, another serious issue, namely climate change, is rising up the list of healthcare concerns, placing even more pressures on planning for the workforce of the future. This week we are repurposing a blog from our US Center for Health Solution’s Dr Elizabeth Baca, Managing Director in our US Deloitte Consulting team, who discusses some of the challenges in and solutions to ‘Creating a global climate-resilient health workforce’.
Global Life sciences outlook 2024: Driving resilience (Part 2)
By Karen Taylor, Director Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions
Our blog last week explored Deloitte’s 2024 Global Life Sciences Sector Outlook report, with a focus on three of the six disruptive trends that we consider life sciences enterprises should consider paying particular attention too. This week’s blog explores the other three trends. Both blogs highlight that with geopolitical, economic, and regulatory landscapes still proving uncertain, life sciences will need to continue relying on innovation, agility, and collaboration as they build on their strong commitment to improving people’s lives.
2024 Global Life Sciences Sector Outlook: Driving resiliency
By Karen Taylor, Director of the UK Centre for Health Solutions
With ‘the global pandemic firmly in the rearview mirror’, Deloitte’s 2024 Global Life Sciences Sector Outlook report, published on 31 May 2024, identifies a broad number of trends with wide ranging global impact that are likely to influence the future growth of life sciences companies. This week’s blog provides a summary of three of the six most disruptive trends that life sciences enterprises should consider paying particular attention to and next week we will cover the remaining three disruptive trends.