The recent pandemic was the best reflection of the advancements in the field of medicine. Vaccines were developed at a lightning-fast pace, with the first vaccine for Covid-19 approved for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) only a year after the outbreak.
It was developed by a joint effort of two of the most advanced pharmaceutical companies when it comes to R&D – Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech SE (NASDAQ:BNTX). The former is an American company while the latter is German.
Other top pharma companies include names like Cigna Corporation (NYSE:CI), Sanofi (NASDAQ:SNY), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:REGN) and Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN).
Due to the medicine industry’s role in the improvement of human well-being, it leads to GDP growth through labor productivity and personal spending. The correlation coefficients for this are demonstrable.
The US, Switzerland and Norway are some of the most advanced countries when it comes to the field of medicine, with huge healthcare spending, numerous pharmaceutical companies and sophisticated academia.
Outlook
Medicine is one of the fastest growing fields in the world. It encompasses the pharmaceutical industry, medical schools and hospitals. The demand for healthcare is expected to increase due to a variety of factors, such as an aging population and advances in medical technology.
According to the Pharma Outlook 2030 by KPMG, many trends are shaping the pharma industry for 2030. For instance, the free-for-service payment model is increasingly being challenged by the end-users, hospitals and insurance agencies. They want the pricing model to be designed around the success and the quality of the product.
One of the most prominent results of this is Cigna Corporation (NYSE:CI)’s 2016 value-based contracts with Sanofi (NASDAQ:SNY), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:REGN) and Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN) for cholesterol drugs, with the insurance agencies receiving discounts if their therapies do not reduce cholesterol levels enough.
Advances in big data and machine learning are also likely to allow for the pre-emptive measures against the onset of diseases instead of just treating them. Further, machine learning is also set to play a pivotal role in drug discovery.
A recent example is the AlphaFold, a deep learning model by Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s subsidiary – DeepMind. It has solved 98.5% of human proteins’ structures, an important leap in drug discovery. Priorly, it had been a challenge that had puzzled molecular biologists for half a century.
Major advances are primarily happening on the academic front of medicine, and AI in the field is pervasive. For instance, Harvard University researchers have come up with an automated cancer detection system, which uses AI to find breast cancer by examining lymph node cells.
Given the trends, AI is largely going to be an integral field to medicine. Another field that is likely to augment the pharma industry by 2030 is nanotechnology. In this regard, Novartis, in partnership with Proteus, has developed a smart pill that can be swallowed for diagnostics purposes.
The pharmaceutical manufacturing market is one of the fastest growing in the world. It was worth $358 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach a valuation of $1.2 trillion by 2030, growing at a solid CAGR of 13%, as reported by Precedence Research.
On the other hand, the drug-discovery industry was valued at $75 billion in 2021, and is projected to grow with a CAGR of 9%, to $162 billion in 2030.
Lastly, the hospital industry is projected to be valued at $2 trillion by 2028, after a growth with a CAGR of 12.5% during the forecast period of 2021-2028. It was valued at $820 billion in 2021.
Let’s now move to the 15 most advanced countries in medicine.