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2023 Global Life Sciences Outlook

Innovating and collaborating for tomorrow

The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the importance of digital advances as companies raced to meet the demand for new testing, vaccines, and treatments to combat the pandemic. However, with increased competition, a shifting regulatory landscape, and growing demands from patients and health care providers, life sciences companies face significant challenges and must find ways to differentiate themselves and remain competitive.

Our 2023 Global Life Sciences Outlook explores seven trends that are expected to shape the sector. In the coming year, the focus will remain on embracing digital technologies, navigating a changing regulatory landscapes and market volatility, and addressing health inequities. By adopting the right strategies and capabilities, life sciences companies can continue to deliver value to patients, health care providers, and other stakeholders.

Although there has been a downturn in M&A activities over the past decade, life sciences companies are poised to witness an increase in M&A values in 2023 due to increased competition and the growing demand for multi-indication pharmaceutical products.

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According to a recent Deloitte survey, R&D innovation is one of the top actions that 91% of life sciences organisations plan to invest in during 2023 and almost half of them are optimistic about the sector’s outlook in the coming year.

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Historically, supply chain management has relied on static assumptions creating forecasts using scenarios from similar circumstances. However, in the event of unforeseen emergencies like a significant disruption in distribution channels, these forecasts might not be adequate.

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Historic global shifts, pharmaceutical reimbursement policies, and intensifying competition have led life sciences companies to adapt using dynamic pricing techniques where prices fluctuate based on real-time data such as customer demand.

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Since the pandemic, three-fourths of people around the world now have experience with at-home tests and companies are increasingly able to access, interpret, and act on the billions of patient data points.

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The pandemic led to many life sciences companies to digitise their operations virtually overnight. Cloud technologies and platforms enabled organisations to let their employees work remotely and collaborate, share data across third party networks, as well as run AI and machine learning (ML) algorithms.

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Inequities in the health system including unconscious bias, a lack of trust, language barriers, impediments to preventative therapies and devices developed to change lives from reaching people who really need them. These inequities also cost life sciences companies substantially in lost productivity annually.

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Explore our previous outlooks

Review or download previous life sciences sector outlooks.

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