NEW YORK, New York – Global assurance, tax and advisory firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC has put a number on the emerging market for personalized health and wellness in the United States: $232 billion and growing at 11 percent per year.
The consultancy that concentrates on industries, including health care, expects the personalized medicine, medical care, and nutrition and wellness market to grow as big as $452 billion by 2015. The market includes pharmaceutical and life sciences companies to diagnostics makers, data storage companies and retailers that sell targeted health products.
That’s a lot of genetic testing kits and yoga classes.
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In its report, The Science of Personalized Medicine: Translating the Promise into Practice, PWC looks at the booming market being created by personalized medicine, which targets individualized treatment and care based on personal and genetic characteristics.
The market, though, is being created by disruptive innovations, which will pose both opportunities and challenges for traditional health care and emerging market participants, PricewaterhouseCoopers says.
According to the report:
- The core diagnostic and therapeutic segment of the market, comprising pharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostics companies, is estimated at $24 billion and expected to grow 10 percent annually, reaching $42 billion by 2015.
- The personalized medical care portion of the market, including telemedicine, health information technology and disease-management services offered by traditional health and technology companies, is estimated at between $4 billion and $12 billion, and could grow tenfold to more than $100 billion by 2015 if telemedicine takes off.
- The related nutrition and wellness market, including retail, complementary and alternative medicine offered by consumer products, food and beverage, leisure and retail companies, is estimated at $196 billion and is projected to grow 7 percent each year to more than $290 billion by 2015.
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The promise of personalized medicine depends on advances in genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, completion of the human genome map and development of targeted diagnostics and therapeutics, PricewaterhouseCoopers says. Genomic testing enables doctors to identify a person’s susceptibility to disease, predict how a given patient could respond to a particular drug and increase the efficacy of treatments to improve health outcomes.
For new market participants, direct-to-consumer diagnostics, targeted consumer products, and telecommunications and technologies that enable the transmission and storage of vast amounts of medical data offer the best opportunities, PWC says.
As for traditional health care organizations, pharmaceutical companies are moving from a blockbuster drug business model toward a  “more collaborative model focused on outcomes and specialized therapies,” the consultancy says. Primary care providers may have to build new service lines around prevention and wellness to replace revenue lost from traditional medical procedures or non-health care companies. Insurers and government agencies that want to embrace personalized medicine will have to rethink coverage.
“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,” said Dr. David M. Levy, global health care leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers, in a written statement. “We are now seeing a blurring of the lines between traditional health care 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.”