Here’s what healthcare leaders expect for the rest of 2024

This year is off to a busy start in healthcare, with more than 20 $1+ billion mergers and acquisitions (M&A), Walmart’s failed venture, and cybersecurity attacks on hospitals.

At the end of 2023, leaders told Healthcare Brew the ways they expected the industry to change this year in areas like artificial intelligence, drug costs, and startups. Now halfway through 2024, leaders shared what they expect will be the biggest trends over the remainder of this year, from affordability challenges to the growing aging population of people ages 65+ and digital health advancements.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tech to remain top of mind

Ken Stein, SVP and global chief medical officer, Boston Scientific: Doctors are drowning in data, but this data is only useful if it is actionable, digestible, and personal to the patient. One uncertainty is how strong a role advances in medtech can play in helping to alleviate the burden on clinicians, to improve outcomes, and [to] drive efficiency. There is a tremendous opportunity to use digital capabilities to increase engagement with HCPs [healthcare providers] and patients, to streamline and improve training and case support, and to use real-time data to better understand clinical practices and outcomes and to make more informed clinical decisions. […] Devices that can continuously monitor and alert doctors and nurses as needed have the potential to improve outcomes, efficiency, and the patient experience. If we thoughtfully harness the power of digital capabilities, we open up tremendous opportunities to transition care from reactive to predictive and preventative.

Oliver Kharraz, founder and CEO, Zocdoc: Big Tech will continue to overpromise and underdeliver in healthcare. Over the past decade, Google, Apple, and Amazon have launched healthcare ventures, each with ample fanfare but little to show for it. This stems from a disconnect between what patients or the industry need and what these companies are primarily solving for: how to leverage their respective core businesses to make money in healthcare. Retrofitting their core competencies into healthcare will remain a subpar strategy for Big Tech, [which] will make more noise than impact throughout 2024.

Pricing to play a bigger role

Kharraz: Americans will be increasingly cost-conscious about healthcare. With both healthcare costs and adoption of high-deductible health plans on the rise, Americans will be increasingly price-sensitive throughout the rest of 2024. Uncertainty and lack of transparency when it comes to out-of-pocket costs, even for in-network care, will drive patients to increasingly select services that offer guaranteed, up-front pricing.

Rebecca D’Amico, VP of strategy and chief of staff to the CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association: Science will continue to unlock curative therapies that transform care for once life-threatening diseases, but these innovations won’t matter if nobody can afford them. The newest gene therapy [Lenmeldy], for example, costs $4.25 million.

More mental health help

Kharraz: Mental health bookings will rise in the back half of 2024, tied to the election. As America approaches another presidential election, patients nationwide will be grappling with tensions surrounding the vote and its outcome. More Americans will likely turn to mental health professionals in the months before and after the election, starting in the summer and potentially continuing through the inauguration and beyond.

Growing old(er)

D’Amico: More than half of all eligible Americans [over 30 million seniors and people with disabilities] have chosen Medicare Advantage (MA), and enrollment is trending upward. They choose MA because it offers better services, better access to care, and better value. Adding to the complexity of this issue is the fact that the healthcare workforce is also getting older, which threatens to exacerbate existing workforce shortages.

Increased investment interest

Laurence Barker, partner, SV Health Investors, investing out of SV’s Dementia Discovery Fund:

1. Rising strategic and investor interest in neuro: Recent clinical successes and regulatory approvals, paired with substantial unmet need and commercial white space that has led to notable recent M&A activity (for example, Karuna Therapeutics acquired by BMS [Bristol Myers Squibb], Cerevel Therapeutics acquired by AbbVie, Caraway Therapeutics acquired by Merck) will continue to attract investors to the CNS [central nervous system].
2. Expansion of clinical infrastructure for CNS drugs: The rollout of Leqembi in 2023, and [the newly approved] donanemab following the recent unanimous Adcomm [advisory committee] recommendation, underscores the need for better clinical infrastructure, including infusion centers and imaging facilities, to support anti-amyloid therapies.
3. Improving fundraising market for quality companies: Despite challenges in public markets, we anticipate interest will continue in first financings for innovative startups and [in financing rounds] for companies that will deliver clinical data within [that] financing round.