Written by
Cranfield, UK, 24th May 2024 – Co-Authored by Imogen Fitt
Precision medicine as a concept exists along a spectrum; as more data is used to inform a patient’s journey we advance further and further into true ‘personalisation’.
The term has been almost synonymous with genomics in the past, however the current healthcare landscape has evolved to encompass many more forms of health-related digital data.
What we do with this data is however somewhat limited by the infrastructure in place that affects caregivers’ ability to connect disparate siloes of information effectively. Furthermore, heterogeneity in practice and terminology further compounds how appropriate it is to group different datasets. This can be solved with time-consuming manual automation or advancements in AI, such as in natural language processing. Once all the data is aggregated and comparable, it also needs to be processed to garner insight and make an individual’s results actionable.
It’s clear that the journey towards precision medicine depends on an inter-reliance between products and technologies therefore, to help build datasets and tools which can help inform and steer clinical practice.
The figure below illustrates this and lists some examples of those digital technologies which will play a supportive role along each ‘tier’.
* It should be noted these areas are not an exhaustive list of technologies which drive precision medicine.
There are several large Healthcare Technology and Big Tech vendors with portfolios that have grown to span many of the products listed above already – but there are also noticeable gaps in said portfolios and trends between different vendor types.
With ‘precision medicine’ referenced in many product launches or portfolio marketing press releases, it’s clear that vendors have the trend front of mind and are wondering how precision medicine will impact healthcare businesses in the future.
So how should digital healthcare vendors invest in precision medicine?
In this insight Signify Research has outlined and evaluated four products in the digital precision medicine ecosystem that will grow and contribute significantly towards achieving ‘true’ precision medicine over the next ten years.
Digital Twins
In healthcare digital twins are virtual replicas which can be used to predict how certain interventions will impact a system. Complexity can vary, but each is composed of training data, a series of computational algorithms and input data. Various technologies may underpin and support this, including blockchain and 5G infrastructure.
Digital twin software can be operational, or patient based; most of the market in healthcare is focused on operational products currently which impact equipment maintenance, departmental operations, and logistical planning, rather than individual patient care. Whilst use of patient-related digital twins is growing, especially for cardiovascular applications, the sparsity of CE and FDA approval is expected to inhibit growth opportunities in the near term.
This doesn’t mean that there isn’t potential within this segment for opportunity longer-term, as such models offer tremendous potential to augment and support decision making in the clinic.
The current market is composed of start-ups and larger healthcare technology vendors who are more likely to develop organ and operational digital twins, respectively. However, as the market matures, we expect partnerships between innovative start-ups and larger health-tech vendors to drive commercialisation. This is likely to occur between complementary portfolios that provide data inputs for these models – for example a vendor providing CT equipment and a start-up that analyses CT images.
In summary, with a plethora of vendor types working away at developing these products, and a wide variety of potential applications which can be addressed, the market for digital twins is certainly gathering momentum. *
* Digital Twins were covered previously by Signify Research in our insight titled ‘Digital Twins: The Mirror to the Future.’ Click the link to learn more!
Theranostics
The next product category featured that has been garnering much media and vendor attention recently is theranostics. Theranostics is a type of nuclear medicine which combines ‘therapeutics’ and ‘diagnostics’ in a single treatment using two radioactive drugs, allowing the effectiveness of a treatment to be visualised over time.
Digital software can help manage patient journeys via coordinating appointments and records in an operational manner, or the practice can also be supported using AI for to quantify and monitor biomarkers of disease.
Although many start-ups exist which focus on the development of radiopharmaceuticals, the market for digital support is rarer. In the future, Signify Research expects end-to-end solution offerings for imaging hardware, radiopharmaceuticals, and image analysis tools such as AI for dosimetry calculations to emerge.
Whilst general use of theranostics is rare in the market today, it is growing as regulatory approvals increase. As this happens expect to hear more regarding Healthtech innovating and partnering within the space.
Genomics
As mentioned previously, genomics has historically been considered synonymous with precision medicine, but clinical use is still relatively low today.
Growth in diagnostics is expected to outpace research use in the future as consumables revenue and sequencing activity continues increasing. This is partially due to reimbursement progress and the increasing availability of genomic biomarkers to help stratify disease.
The current market is dominated by QIAGEN and Illumina for hardware; however, there are many smaller vendors focused on software and the analysis of this genomic data with other types of information emerging.
Additionally, genomics involves the generation of huge amounts of data, which will demand additional support. Many healthcare technology partners already possess some form of genomic IT software within their portfolios today – as the market evolves, we expect more to follow suit.
Beyond this, collaborations with exploratory AI vendors like SOPHiA GENETICS are emerging and expected to accelerate in the near-term.
Data Aggregation Platforms
The final product on our list is data aggregation platforms.
These are designed to collect individual patient data from separate IT siloes, with some also helping to curate, de-identify and analyse this data for internal and external use. The quality and availability of high-quality data is essential in understanding individual patient circumstances and thus is a critical aspect of all precision medicine initiatives.
Whilst several platforms exist today, most vendors offering access to healthcare data are still required to manually curate datasets to facilitate use, which negatively impacts profit margins and timelines. More work is required using techniques like NLP to reach full maturity.
Although some vendors are actively generating significant revenue from these products today, there remains significant potential for growth as the use of Real-World Data by life sciences customers continue to grow.
Because of its relatively untapped potential, the market today for data platforms is fragmented and is composed of many different types of vendors.
These include EHR, PACS, image exchange, and specialist clinical IT vendors, big and small. In addition, there already exists a competitive market today for third-party data brokers which offer access to static databases of information.
The competitive ecosystem is volatile and will remain so over the next few years. Acquisitions, partnerships and exists will occur amongst vendor types, with some partnerships more likely than others. Because of this, data platforms are likely to be the most active market segment over the next few years.
Investing in the Future
Whilst there is an immense amount of opportunity out there for vendors to partner and expand their precision medicine portfolios, the above products are likeliest to drive both interest and investment in the short term.
As major healthcare IT vendors consider how best to position businesses to take advantage of interest from customer bases, it is likely they will begin to encapsulate these products under distinct diagnostic initiatives, for example by selling an entire ‘oncology workflow’ of products.
Furthermore, precision medicine will also be influenced by wider healthcare trends such as the emergence of value-based care reimbursement. This complicates competitive analyses considerably, especially when working within organisational siloes. However, as the above synopsis demonstrates, the future promise of digital precision medicine is starting to be realised – who benefits the most is still the critical question.
Related Research
In our upcoming Digital Precision Medicine – World – 2024 study, Signify Research will cover these areas and more in further depth, providing readers with the information needed to drive company strategy over the long term.
This will include analyses into product drivers and barriers, an in-depth competitive analysis, and a deep dive into how customers are developing and allowing prevision medicine initiatives to influence purchasing.
Ultimately the report will answer definitively whether for digital healthcare vendors, precision medicine is a strategy driving decision making amongst the competitive ecosystem, or just ‘branding’ used to capitalise off of ‘hype’.
For more information on the trends and technologies covered in this report, see the Digital Precision Medicine – 2024 – World brochure.
About The Author
Alexandra Bream
Alex joined Signify research in 2023 as a market analyst in the diagnostics and life sciences area. In summer 2023, Alex graduated from the University of Birmingham with a first-class degree in Biochemistry. At University Alex was the president for the Women in Science and Engineering society and is a big advocate for this. In Alex’s spare time she likes cooking and enjoys travelling.
Imogen Fitt
Imogen joined Signify in 2018 as part of the Healthcare IT team. She holds a 1st class Biomedical Sciences degree from the University of Warwick. During her tenure Imogen has completed studies on digital pathology and the use of AI in drug development, expanding Signify Research’s coverage of clinical/preclinical markets. In her spare time she enjoys cultivating her interest in abstract theatre companies & popping to London to see a show.
About the Diagnostics and Lifesciences Team
The Diagnostics and Lifesciences team provides market intelligence and detailed insights on the multiple healthcare technology markets where the clinical world intersects with the preclinical. Our areas of coverage include digital pathology, laboratory information systems, clinical Real-World Data (cRWD) platforms, oncology information systems, tumour board software, oncology decision support software and radiotherapy IT. Each report provides a data-centric and global outlook of its markets with granular country-level insights. Our research process blends primary data collected from in-depth interviews with healthcare professionals and technology vendors, to provide a balanced and objective view of the market.
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