Report predicts next 10 years in pharma

Advanced technologies and patient centric innovations are set to change the pharma industry in the next decade, according to a new report by The Pistoia Alliance.

The not-for-profit organisation’s ‘2030: Life sciences and Health in the Digital Age’ report imagines what the next 10 years of technological, social and political evolution will be like in relation to pharma and life sciences.

The report mentions that by the early 2020s, AI will be largely responsible for diagnosing patients – resulting in healthcare providers suffering from a serious shortage of physicians. However, the report warns that widespread deployment of automated diagnosis will result in patient deaths, caused by algorithms making errors. Drug discovery will see transformation due to pharma companies using advanced algorithms and modelling to design innovative drugs of high specificity and low toxicity.

More so, the report states that current rises in healthcare costs in rich economies such as the USA will be under control. Price control initiatives in pharma will result in the industry accepting a need to move from the one-size-fits-all imbursement model to one more focused on ‘payment for outcomes.

Other advancements forecasted in the report include a focus on patient-centric innovations such as precision medicine, genomics, stem-cell and gene-based therapies, as well as an increased use of real-world data to improve discovery research.

“Our agenda must shift from treatment of disease to prevention and cure, and with that, the reward systems we have to promote these solutions must flex to encompass the new agenda,” said John Wise, report co-author and member of the Pistoia Alliance operations team. “To realise these goals, the industry must embrace the technical and scientific advances we are seeing in the life sciences. The new wave of digital technologies supporting diagnostics, therapeutics and health devices, coupled with the progress of AI and Machine Learning, will deliver exciting progress. Further, the analysis of data generated by this digital revolution will make a profound contribution to the understanding of disease, the delivery of new therapies and the palliation of the human condition.”

The report was written by Dr Steve Arlington and John Wise, following three ‘futurecasting’ workshops held throughout 2019 in San Francisco, Boston and London. 75 delegates attended, and participants included regulators in Europe and US, healthcare professionals, drug discovery experts, technology leaders, and specialist VCs.