The market for personalized medicine in the United States will grow to $452 billion by 2015 from $232 billion, according to a new report published by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The consulting firm says personalized medicine, which targets individualized treatment and care based on personal and genetic variation, will grow at an annual rate of 11 percent and create both opportunities and challenges for traditional healthcare and emerging market players.

 

“Medical science and technological advancement have converged with the growing emphasis on health, wellness and prevention sweeping the country to push personalized medicine to a tipping point,” says David Levy, global healthcare leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers. “We are now seeing a blurring of the lines between traditional healthcare offerings and consumer-oriented wellness products and services. The market potential is enormous for any company that learns to leverage the science, target individuals and develop products and services that promote health.”

 

The PwC estimates are based on a broad view of the market opportunity beyond drugs and devices to also include demand for high-tech storage and data-sharing as well as low-tech products and services aimed at consumers’ heightened awareness of their own health risks. The report, “The New Science of Personalized Medicine: Translating the Promise into Practice,” breaks the world of personalized medicine into the core diagnostic and therapeutic segment ($42 billion by 2015 from $24 billion today); medical care including telemedicine, health information technology and disease management services ($12 billion by 2015 from $4 billion today); and nutrition and wellness ($290 billion by 2015 from $196 today). The medical care portion could grow to as much as $100 billion by 2015 depending on whether or not telemedicine takes off, PwC says.

 

The firm warns that the growth of personalized medicine will change the role of traditional healthcare organizations and create new challenges. It is pushing Big Pharma away from the blockbuster drug model to a more collaborative model focused on outcomes and specialized therapies. It will force primary care providers to consider building new service lines around prevention and wellness in order to replace revenues lost from traditional medical procedures. When they do, they can expect to face low-cost competition from non-healthcare companies skilled in consumer marketing and consumers armed with knowledge of their options. And, it will require physicians to get training in genomics and proteomics in order to stay relevant in the area of personalized medicine. To educate the next generation of physicians and nurses in the complex issues raised by genomic and proteomic science, universities will have to update their programs.

 

Payers that want to embrace the new science will have to rethink how they define coverage. Insurance premiums today are based on actuarial statistics that apply to large, predictable populations. By contrast, personalized medicine targets small populations which are far less stable and predictable from an actuarial standpoint.

 

“There is an urgent need to increase the value of healthcare, but we can’t get there by fixing the healthcare of yesterday. We need to replace our current focus on treating disease with a better approach that is personalized, preventive, predictive and participatory, the basic tenants of personalized medicine,” said Gerald McDougall, principal in charge of personalized medicine and health sciences, PricewaterhouseCoopers. “Greater collaboration around personalized medicine should be a key strategy for health reform.”