$1.5 Trillion for Disruption? Amazon, Google, Silicon Valley Try to Upend Healthcare

The data-driven digital transformation of healthcare is well underway, attracting key Silicon Valley figures and potentially rocketing the global life sciences industry’s worth to $1.5 trillion by 2022, according to a new report.

Digital health, “the explosion of patient data,” and value-based care’s growing grip on providers and insurers are all contributing to industry growth, according to the analysis, published by Frost & Sullivan, an innovation-centered growth-partnership firm. Precision medicine like gene therapies and the “advanced technologies” that make these innovations possible are also on the rise.

An increase in digital connectivity, meanwhile, has united previously disparate areas, such as biopharma, drug delivery devices, and diagnostic technologies. And that potential for synergy has drawn household names in tech—Google, Amazon, Apple, and even Facebook—to claim their presence in the sector, according to the report.

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“The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud-based solutions for drug discovery and clinical trial workflow is improving the overall efficiency of production,” Unmesh Lal, program manager for transformational health at Frost & Sullivan, said in a statement. “Additionally, pathology and research laboratories are increasingly adopting health analytics solutions to track the test utilization and efficiently tackle reimbursement issues.”

In short, all of the players, technologies, and concepts that Healthcare Analytics News™ covers every day are making the business impacts that experts have claimed they will.

But healthcare doesn’t need to wait four years to measure the strength of these innovations. In 2018, pharma companies are slated to spend more than $10 billion on drug discovery and clinical development tools that leverage AI and the cloud. The life sciences industry is also expected to spend $8.5 billion on outsourcing bio-analytical and manufacturing, and $500 million in startup money is projected to fuel liquid biopsy and companion diagnostic ventures.

Going forward, it’s likely that an altered tax structure and technological advances will make precision medicine king.

“Overall personalization, decentralization, collaboration, and prevention are amplifying precision health, thereby shaping the future business models and the workforce of life sciences companies,” Lal noted.

The precise roles played by the Silicon Valley giants, however, remains unclear, to some degree. Amazon recently bought PillPack, a digital pharmacy, which places the tech company firmly in healthcare, a long-held desire of the company. Apple is betting big on electronic health records (EHRs) and mobile health technologies. Google is developing disease-fighting algorithms, a cloud API, and EHR solutions.

Their involvement in life sciences and healthcare isn’t in question. Rather, the variables are to what extent and effect.

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