By Emily May, Manager, and Karen Taylor Director, Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions

Deloitte’s 16^th flagship technology report, Tech Trends 2025, paints a future where AI isn't just a tool, but an invisible engine that makes everything work smarter, faster, and more intuitively, ‘like magic, but grounded in algorithms’. It equates the ubiquitous nature of AI, to electricity or the internet, predicting that AI will become fundamentally woven into the fabric of our lives, so that we stop noticing it. Our colleagues working across the life sciences and healthcare (LSHC) industry are seeing first-hand the industry’s rapid evolution, driven by technological advancements that are reshaping how companies research, develop, and deliver treatments and devices for healthcare professionals, organisations and patients. They have therefore developed a LSHC perspective of the Tech Trends 2025 report, Navigating the Future of Technology in Life Sciences and Healthcare examining how technology is being implemented and the implications for the LSHC industry.  This blog explores these LSHC trends.

About Deloitte Tech Trends 2025 report

The Deloitte Tech Trends 2025 report provides insights into nascent and maturing technologies, exploring their potential impact on businesses and highlighting the importance of intentional intersections between industries and technologies. It considers that future innovation will likely emerge from industry convergences and encourages businesses to explore opportunities beyond their traditional boundaries.

The trends are derived  from deep cross-industry experience and real-world case studies, and comprise six macro technology forces, divided into three elevating forces and three grounding forces (see Figure 1).

The LSHC perspective

The LSHC industry perspective builds on the Tech Trends 2025 report. In providing a specific industry view, it highlights relevant use cases and examples that are already transforming the industry. The overarching theme is the ubiquity of AI and its integral role in every facet of the LSHC landscape, with its potential to drive innovation, enhance efficiency, and improve patient outcomes.

INFORMATION/ What’s next for AI

A diverse toolkit of AI technologies will be needed to address the industry's unique challenges. While large language models (LLMs) offer significant potential, smaller, purpose-built models that improve security and efficiency, as well as multi-modal models that can process different types of data, like images and text, will increase in popularity. This will support a shift from augmenting human capabilities to autonomous execution, requiring courageous leadership willing to embrace new ways of working and collecting and collating data for an AI-enabled world.

How are LSHC exploring this trend?

• Accelerated biopharma research: AI is streamlining drug discovery, from automating literature reviews to accelerating software development. Agentic AI systems designed for autonomous action can significantly increase the success rates for AI-discovered drugs.
• Resilient supply chains: by leveraging predictive capabilities and enabling autonomous corrective actions, AI can create more resilient, ‘self-healing’ supply chains leading to smoother operations and more agile responses to changing dynamics.
• Personalised experiences: Agentic AI can empower organisations to deliver personalised experiences by analysing vast customer datasets to understand individual needs and preferences; leading to more tailored, cost-effective treatments.

INTERACTION/ Spatial computing takes centre-stage

Spatial computing blends the physical and digital worlds creating immersive experiences beyond virtual or augmented reality (VR/AR). It uses sensors, IOT, and 3D data to create visible digital replicas of real-world environment. This enables complex simulations, data driven insights and enhanced interactions with digital systems. In the future, advancements in AI could lead to AI agents anticipating and proactively meeting user needs. Businesses need to prepare by investing in robust data pipelines and embracing the transformative potential of spatial computing.

How are LSHC exploring this trend?

• Improving the efficiency of pharma R&D: spatial computing can be used to visualise molecules in 3D, enabling more efficient drug design and virtual testing, with virtual environments enhancing patient recruitment and data collection.
• Improving healthcare operations: Healthcare organisations are exploring the use of virtual representations to experiment with different care models, assessing the potential impact on factors like wait times and patient access before implementing changes.
• Revolutionising MedTech design: digital twins can enable virtual prototyping and testing, leading to faster innovation cycles. Simulations can be used to optimise manufacturing and repair processes, improving efficiency and accuracy.

COMPUTATION/ Hardware is eating the world

AI isn’t just software but hinges on a new generation of chips that embed AI models into computers and devices creating a hardware renaissance with graphics-processing units (GPUs) and neural processing units (NPUs making AI more powerful, more energy-efficient. Crucial decisions about edge device adoption and data centre strategies that balance cost, capability, and sustainability will be needed. This revolution will usher in an era of advanced robotics and intelligent devices, with hardware evolving from enabling AI to embodying it.

How are LSHC exploring this trend?

• Real-time diagnostic tools: NPUs powering portable diagnostic tools, real-time patient monitoring devices, and even smart prosthetics powered could lead to faster diagnoses, personalised treatments, and improved accessibility.
• Robotic transformation: humanoid robots could reshape how we approach patient care and medical research, from handling hazardous waste to assisting in operating rooms.

BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY/ IT amplified

The rise of AI is fundamentally reshaping the role of IT, shifting it from a cost center to a strategic differentiator. This requires a fundamental mindset shift with leaner IT departments moving from building and maintaining technology to become orchestrators and innovators, prioritising value-driven investment, shaping AI strategies, requiring tech leaders to acquire new skills including ethical AI expertise.

How are life sciences and healthcare exploring this trend?

• Driving value with centres for enablement (C4Es): C4Es are breaking down traditional IT silos and empowering technology innovation. By providing access to low-code/no-code platforms and a self-service mindset, C4Es are helping organisations become more agile and responsive to changing needs.
• GenAI is fundamentally reshaping the IT function: automating most tasks. from code generation to testing and documentation, freeing IT professionals to focus on innovation and higher-value activities as carefully crafted guardrails and strategies around prompting, mitigate risk and output hallucinations.
• The evolving IT function: the democratisation of AI enables IT departments to evolve shaping AI business strategies, guiding ‘buy vs. build’ decisions, and ensuring value realisation. Ultimately empowering organisation-wide innovation through a decentralised, AI-powered ecosystem.

CYBER AND TRUST/ The new math

Quantum computers can solve problems beyond the capabilities of the most powerful classical computers, however, their march towards maturity is matched by unprecedented decryption power, placing cybersecurity practices at risk. This threat stems from quantum computer’s ability to break the encryption algorithms that underpin our digital world, exposing sensitive data and systems to potential attacks. Organisations need to upgrade to quantum-resistant cryptography and enhance their governance with security focused practices and an agile security posture.

How are LSHC exploring this trend?

• Regulation-driven change: the widespread adoption of quantum-resistant solutions will ultimately be driven by evolving regulatory requirements and industry standards.
• Future-proofing quantum device security: as medical devices become increasingly sophisticated and interconnected, building products with quantum-resistant security can provide a competitive advantage and build consumer trust.
• Ensuring confidentiality of sensitive information: LSHC organisations handle vast amounts of highly sensitive data, from patient records to intellectual property. Adopting quantum-secure practices is crucial for maintaining the confidentiality of this information and consumer trust.

CORE MODERNISATION/ The intelligent core

Integrating AI into existing workflows is driving a profound shift from static data repositories to dynamic, intelligent hubs creating new efficiencies and revenue growth The adoption of AI is not just about adding new tools and upgrading legacy systems but is about creating a more agile, automated, intelligent, and data-driven core that can support the organisation's strategic goals and reshapes how businesses operate.

How are LSHC are exploring this trend?

• Accelerating transformation: By automating the extraction of data and documentation from legacy systems, organisations can gain rapid insights into functionality, data mapping, service dependencies, and purpose, reducing analysis from days to seconds.
• Creating an AI-enhanced core: off-the-shelf, AI-embedded, solutions are becoming increasingly accessible, providing organisations, with automation and intelligence capabilities. Organisations with mature AI strategies and appropriate licensing models can extract value from these solutions.
• Architecting and organising for AI: adaptable organisations that can seamlessly integrate existing and emerging AI tools will be in the best position to harness the full potential of AI. ‘Buy vs build’ decisions come with significant cost, control and flexibility implications.

Conclusion

The LSHC perspective of the Deloitte Tech Trends 2025, explores a future where technological advancements will revolutionise the industry. Both reports provide more detail and real-world examples of the vast scale of opportunities and potential benefits. including the need to embrace industry convergence and learn lessons from other industries as well as understanding the synergies between technologies and their ability to compound each other’s growth. We started by highlight how the authors of the Tech Trends report consider that AI, like electricity will become ubiquitous. In the same way that electricity precipitated an industrial revolution, the evidence is irrefutable, AI is already leading the next one!

Emily May, Research Manager, Centre for Health Solutions

Emily is a manager in the Centre for Health Solutions where she applies her background in both scientific research and pharmaceutical analytics to produce supported insights for the Life Sciences and Healthcare practice. Emily leads the research and publication of the life sciences insights, performing thorough analysis to find solutions for the challenges impacting the industry and generating predictions for the future. Prior to joining the centre, Emily worked as an Analytical Scientist conducting physical chemistry analysis on early stage drug compounds and previously lived in Antwerp, Belgium where she researched and developed water-based adhesive films.

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Karen Taylor - Director, UK Centre for Health Solutions

Karen is the Research Director of the Centre for Health Solutions. She supports the Healthcare and Life Sciences practice by driving independent and objective business research and analysis into key industry challenges and associated solutions; generating evidence based insights and points of view on issues from pharmaceuticals and technology innovation to healthcare management and reform.

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