Life sciences industry forecasts significant revenue from connected health within 5 years

A substantial 63 per cent of life sciences companies, including those in biopharma, currently have connected health products on the market or in development. Regardless of their product development stage, these organisations predict that connected health will generate over 20 per cent of their revenue within five years. Yet a lack of essential data capabilities could hamper this ambition.

This is according to the Capgemini Research Institute’s latest report, “The Connected Health Revolution”, which also found that three in five life sciences organisations are currently developing a roadmap for integrating generative AI, and over half are already piloting generative AI for interactions with patients and healthcare providers (HCPs).

The research is based on a targeted survey of 420 industry executives from various biotechnology, pharmaceutical (biopharma), and medtech organisations exploring connected health initiatives with annual revenues exceeding $500 million. 

In addition, Capgemini conducted in-depth discussions with 15 executives from biopharma and medtech organisations to complement the survey findings. This research serves as an update to the Capgemini Research Institute’s 2022 connected health report, ‘Unlocking the value in connected health’, which assessed the maturity and adoption levels of connected health and explores how biotechnology and biopharmaceutical organisations can manage and grow their connected health portfolios more effectively.

While around half of organisations believe their connected health efforts have matured, most admit that robust data management capabilities are still lacking. Despite a more mature approach to connected health strategy and planning compared to three years ago, the research finds there is a general lack of a common framework, standards, and tools for data handling in relation to connected health.

The report also finds that there has been a sixfold increase in biopharma organisations with market ready connected products since 2021. While preventive care and fitness remain top priorities for a majority of biopharma organisations, there is a growing emphasis on previously underserved areas, including diagnosis and monitoring. Oncology, immunology, and cardiology are primary focuses for most biopharma companies, with emerging areas such as mental health, diabetes, obesity, and dermatology also showing huge growth since 2021.

The biopharma organisations have also made considerable progress in leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and cloud in the last three years. Biopharma organisations using AI for predictive analysis of real-time data from connected health products has almost doubled since 2021 from 24 per cent to 46 per cent. The report also found that more than two-fifths (42 per cent) also have a cloud platform in place for data integration from different sources. 

However, only a minority of life sciences organisations surveyed mentioned that they had an adequate supply of technical skills such as AR/VR and generative AI. To bridge this gap, nearly two-thirds of organisations prefer upskilling of the existing workforce, while 56 per cent would hire new talent.