Welcome back to another episode of MedCity FemFwd, a podcast dedicated to exploring the breakthroughs and challenges in women’s health. In this episode, we’re joined by Claire Love, PwC’s global health industries advisory leader.
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We discuss PwC’s recent report showing the opportunities in the fertility and reproductive health market.
Here is an AI-generated transcript of the episode:
Marissa Plescia: Welcome back to MedCity FemFwd. I’m Marissa Plescia, reporter for MedCity News. In this episode, we’re joined by Claire Love of PwC. We discuss PwC’s recent report on the fertility market
Marissa: Hi, Claire. Thanks so much for joining MedCity FemFwd.
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Claire Love: Hi, Marissa. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Marissa: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so, you know, we’re here talking today about your, um, new- PwC’s new report on fertility. Um, but before we get into some of the findings of the report, can you just tell me a little bit about why you felt it was important to conduct this report?
Claire Love: Absolutely. So you’re probably aware, we as PwC have been investing a ton into women’s health, broadly speaking. And really, when we defined women’s health, we defined it in terms of the, the conditions that uniquely, disproportionately, and differently affect women. And to me, this is just represents a massive business opportunity for folks, right?
Because we see tremendous unmet need and potential businesses to address that need. And really by connecting those dots, what’s exciting to me is the opportunity both for investors to be able to build market returns on that, uh, but also for women to get more access to treat- treatments. And so when we think about fertility, fertility is clearly one of the areas we’ve seen a lot of investment over the last number of years for a range of reasons we can get into.
Um, so I think it’s an exciting topic to talk about, um, both in terms of fertility in the moment of infertility, but one of the important points we like to make is it’s also about a woman’s journey starting from when she’s first contemplating thinking about having a child, or frankly, a man, right? It really is not just a, a female challenge, it’s a, it’s a human challenge.
Marissa: Yeah. Yeah, very well said. So, um, when thinking about the report, what findings do you want people to really take away? What findings really stuck out to you?
Claire Love: So I think one would be there’s still just tremendous growth to be had in this market. I think if you think about what are the drivers of that growth, they’re the obvious things, like from a demographics perspective, people are having children later and later.
Um, and that does mean that it can be more challenging, right? And so that both creates an opportunity for preemptive moves like egg freezing for folks to actually, you know, take ownership of their own fertility journey from a much younger age, um, in order to then be able to have children at a later age.
But then also it will mean that there are different therapies and treatments that are required as folks progress through that journey. The other piece is around access. So I think access is gonna be an incredibly important topic to continue to push on across the country and globally. It’s fascinating when you look across the world at the proportion of folks who need fertility treatments versus actually receive fertility treatments, and you can look at countries like Spain and Australia where there is already great access that exists, and therefore much higher levels of fertility treatments.
Um, I think there’s more opportunity in the US to be able to provide that care to folks who need it. And one of the, one of the things that- I think could drive that is obviously state mandates, but that’s been talked about for a long time. I also think there’s some really interesting supply side dynamics that can also change.
So for example, leveraging AI in embryo selection, right? Like RE’s has historically been one of the, the constraint points in the fertility ecosystem, and so to actually be able to unlock that growth, um, by leveraging AI technologies is, is really exciting.
Marissa: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And was there anything as you were conducting this report that really surprised you that you weren’t expecting to see in the fertility market?
Claire Love: You know, I think the, the biggest surprise to me is always how much further we can go. You know, I- you would think that at this point in time that the folks who need access to fertility are receiving fertility treatments, but that just really is not the case. And so to me, I think the most surprising piece is, is having looked at these businesses for years now, is how much more growth there still is and how many more challenges there are to overcome.
Um, but that I think that will still create some phenomenal business returns over the long term.
Marissa: Yeah. Yeah, going off of that, you provide several implications for different key stakeholders like pharma companies, payers, providers, um, tech companies. Can you talk a little bit about- Yeah … those implications and the role that they can play in, you know, helping and supporting that growth?
Claire Love: For sure. So maybe just to go back to the tech point, because I think it’s one of the most interesting in the fertility ecosystem. Um, you know, historically y- we look at medical schools, and medical schools basically just do not produce enough REs to support the demand. And so when you look at, at the fertility clinics, they’re trying to recruit the REs out of the systems.
And so I think there’s, there is this fundamental challenge of do we have enough REs to support the fertility ecosystem? I think a couple of provocative ideas that are being discussed out there, one is around what could be the role of an OBGYN even in, in some of these, uh, fertility networks. And so could you actually have OBGYNs playing a larger role in fertility as well going forward?
It’s almost like we had a whole discussion on menopause, and in that discussion we talked about what is the role of the OBGYN versus the role of the primary care physician. And so I think these roles are blending, and to the extent that we can actually tap into the scale from these other systems, it can be incredibly powerful.
So I am excited about opportunities to think about those, those different stakeholders across the fertility ecosystem, and how we could actually leverage them to drive more growth. Um, I also truly believe in the companies that are driving AI. This is… You know, people talk a lot about AI these days, but in fertility we’ve been talking about a lot of these AI technologies for the last five to 10 years.
Um, and a l- lot of it, again, has to do with if you can best select the embryo which is the most, you know, successful, most likely to be successful, that is a phenomenally powerful thing to be able to do. And it could also potentially increase your throughput in a fertility s- clinic. So I think there’s just lots of opportunity to tap into technology in new and different ways there.
Um, so those would be a couple of, couple of thoughts. On the pharma front, um, one area that, you know, I feel like I have to mention, but is also just a really interesting implication, is around the GLP-1s. And so, you know, there’s a discussion of one of the challenges for folks who are having an infertility journey challenge is, um, you know, sometimes obesity has to do with why they’re having a hard time actually getting pregnant to begin with.
And so the role of GLP-1s and fertility is a really interesting intersection. And so we see some fertility doctors are very much leaning into this as, you know, the first step should potentially be to go onto a GLP-1 to better improve the odds of having a successful pres- uh, pregnancy down the road. Um, there are others who have other views, right?
But I think that debate is a really healthy debate for us to be having because while we traditionally think of the, the, the, you know, pharma products that are required just for the fertility journey itself, I think there is also this opportunity to think more broadly of, you know, are there ways to actually increase the odds of success of a fertility journey.
Marissa: Yeah. Yeah, that’s really interesting. Thank you for sharing. Um, and PwC has conducted a couple of other, uh, women’s health-related reports. I know you did one about the women’s health market as a whole, and another about oncology. Can you touch a little bit about, um, you know, what some of the focuses of those reports were as well?
Claire Love: Absolutely. So again, we started off with this broad-based, uh, perspective to really define what is women’s health, and then we’ve been ticking through what we think of as some of the hot spaces within women’s health. So our first conversation was around menopause, which as you can imagine is, you know, a very hotly discussed area.
And I think there’s a ton of fantastic companies that are growing to really tap into the unmet need that exists for women not receiving the, the therapies that they’ve needed. And now that we have clearer guidelines and more opportunities to tap into the HRTs, et cetera, it’s just like a phenomenal business opportunity.
So we’ve talked a lot about menopause. We’ve also spent a lot of time talking about the importance of thinking about women-specific oncology, and I think, you know, there obviously breast cancer gets lots of attention, but we think there’s so many other cancers that equally need R&D dollars flowing into them in order to get to the right therapeutics.
And so that’s a really important area to focus in on. Through that conversation, we’ve also had a lot of conversations with folks about, yes, there is, you know, ovarian cancer, et cetera, but there’s also lung cancer. You know, there’s other forms of cancer that differently and disproportionately impact women, and that’s really important to think about as well.
Um, so we’re excited for this fertility conversation. After that is going to come a conversation in the neuroscience space. And so when you think about, you know, women are 70% of Alzheimer’s patients, and so thinking about what is the biology that is unique to women that also triggers some of these conditions disproportionately is very important.
Um, and so I’m looking forward to that as our next piece.
Marissa: Yeah. Really excited for that. Going off of that, what are some of your ultimate goals with, you know, providing all these different, um, reports that talk about women conditions and also conditions that affect both men and women but maybe affect women differently?
Claire Love: So our hope is that, one, it elevates the conversation so that people really see the opportunities, and then two, it triggers investments at the end of the day. Like, that is what success looks like for us, is we are highlighting the opportunity for businesses to step in and fill these holes, and we’re s- we’re highlighting the opportunity fundamentally for investors to back those companies.
Um, so success to me is that combination.
Marissa: Yeah. Yeah, so well said. Well, Claire, this has been such an interesting conversation. Thank you so much for joining MedCity Pinboard, and best of luck on those future reports.
Claire Love: Thank you so much, and thank you for highlighting this important conversation.