Center for Health Solutions: Highlights From 2024 and What O Watch | Deloitte US has been saved
By Jay Bhatt, D.O., managing director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions and the Deloitte Health Equity Institute, Deloitte Services, LP
Welcome to 2025! As we head into a new year, I wanted to take a quick look back at some of the work the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions produced in 2024. The 18 papers we published last year covered everything from women's health, to longevity, to virtual health, to health equity, to potential generative AI blind spots. (These reports are linked below.) Here are highlights from a few of our reports, and my thoughts on what to watch this year:
Women’s health: Although women make up more than half of the US population, women’s health has long been viewed by investors as a niche market. Our analysis of tech investment trends found that women’s health appears to be emerging as a profitable market. (See Can investors help women's health break through the glass ceiling?) Another report looked into why women are more likely than men to skip or delay medical care. We found that three key factors—affordability, access, and prior experiences—drive these inequities. (See Why US women skip or delay health care.) These two reports expand on Deloitte’s 2023 paper, Hiding in plain sight: The health care gender toll (also referred to as the “pink tax.”) These reports highlight how health care organizations and investors can prioritize and design their services and products to help meet the needs of women and help them maintain or improve their health.
What to watch in 2025: Despite what appears to be increased awareness of women’s health issues, research and investment could continue to lag in 2025. However, this could be an opportunity for health care stakeholders to focus on products and services that solve for inequities and structural challenges. A recently released third-party report predicts a “paradigm shift in woman’s health.” The report notes an “untapped market” that includes health conditions that uniquely, disproportionately, or differently affect women.1 In addition, a few recent federal initiatives could help stimulate interest and investments in women’s health.2
Life spans and health spans: The average life span in the US is 77.9 years, but we found that Americans are generally living their final 12 years in poor health. (See Employers can spark healthy aging.) Businesses across sectors can play a role in improving the life spans and health spans of their workers. According to the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions’ economic analysis, improving health equity across the US could increase corporate profits by $763 billion and add $2.8 trillion to the gross domestic product by 2040.
What to watch in 2025: Employers may continue to focus on the health and well-being of their workers this year. This could present an opportunity for employers and health plans to provide benefits, resources, education, and support to employees to help them maintain or improve their health and well-being. On a related note, the idea of food as medicine is gaining momentum for the role it plays in helping people live longer, healthier lives.3 Some foods could be tailored to prevent, manage, or treat specific health conditions. Moreover, understanding the molecular make-up of our food could make it possible to design nutritionally dense crops.4
Virtual health: Despite growing demand from consumers, virtual health usage appears to be flat. Although many health systems are both interested in and capable of offering virtual health services, their organizational priorities may not align with consumer needs. Some health systems have cut back on virtual services despite consumer demand. But 24% of surveyed consumers said they are willing to switch doctors in order to access virtual options. (See The growing disconnect between virtual health availability and consumer demand.)
What to watch in 2025: Health care organizations might continue to scale back or discontinue their virtual health offerings if it adds new costs and places more pressure on staff. Regulatory levers could further impact the landscape for virtual health innovation and delivery. This could create an opening for start-ups, investors, and companies from outside of the health care industry to fill the gap.
Margins, growth and profitability: Both the life sciences and health care sectors appear to be more optimistic about the year ahead than we have seen in years, according to our year-end surveys of industry executives. About 70% of health care executives said they expect to see revenue growth and improved profitability in 2025. (See 2025 US health care outlook.) About 3 out of 4 surveyed life sciences executives said they expect strong growth in the year ahead, and a majority of respondents predicted margins will expand. Additionally, advancements in science and technology could lead to more breakthrough innovations. (See the 2025 life sciences outlook).
What to watch in 2025: Product pipelines will likely be paramount to margins, growth, and profitability for life sciences companies. In health care, better margins could mean more funding for core technologies. Industry leaders may need to be particularly agile to keep up with regulatory and legislative changes that could impact their organizations and customers. Further focus on technology as an enabler, and investments in an appropriate workforce, will likely be top of mind for upskilling and addressing skill gaps.
Generative AI: Artificial intelligence and generative AI hold potential for the life sciences and health care sectors. The biopharma industry appears to be on the brink of large-scale disruption driven by interoperable data, advances in AI and analytics, open and secure platforms, and patient-centric care. (See Measuring the return from pharmaceutical innovation.) In the medtech space, for example, we estimate that AI and generative AI could reduce research and development costs by up to 20%. (See Is generative AI changing the game for medtech?) However, consumers are increasingly leery about the technology and how it is being used in health care. (See Building and maintaining trust in generative AI.)
What to watch in 2025: Efforts to grow margins and profitability across the industry could push some life sciences and health care organizations to invest in technologies that could help streamline processes, improve staff productivity, and reduce costs. While demand for digital talent is likely to grow across all industries, the supply of digital talent might not be sufficient to meet this demand The technology sector alone could have a global talent shortage of 4.3 million people by 2030 (see Medtech's digital talent challenge). For the biopharmaceutical sector, AI is likely to continue to be used to streamline drug identification and accelerate development processes (see Generative AI to reshape the future of life sciences.) Some health systems will likely continue to leverage the generative AI tools imbedded in their electronic medical record (EMR) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Technologies can reduce the amount of time revenue-cycle staff spend on administrative tasks by 41% to 50% (see Technology and health care workforce). Health plans tend to a few steps ahead of health systems in their use of emerging technologies and are likely to expand their use of AI. However, they may need to proceed with caution given public opinion about the use of algorithms in evaluating and denying claims.5
Along with our reports, the Center also published scores of blogs including nearly a dozen interviews with biopharma and health system executives, trade association directors, and other thought leaders from the life sciences and health care sectors. We recently created a landing page featuring interesting Q&As from 2024. (See Health Care and Life Sciences executive insights).
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Endnotes:
1The business case for accelerating women's health investment, Women’s Health Access Matters (WHAM), January 2025
2White House hosts first-ever Women's Health Research Conference, The White House/American Presidency Project, December 12, 2024
3Food Is Medicine: A project to unify and advance collective action, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
4Food for Health: Considering the nutrient density of food crops, The Institute for Functional Medicine, August 30, 2023
5The deep roots of Americans' hatred of their health care system , VOX, December 6, 2024
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