Frost & Sullivan’s recent analysis, “Post-Pandemic Global Healthcare Market Outlook, 2020,” forecasts that 2020 will be an unforgiving but transformational year for the healthcare industry. As the world grapples with a global emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry is expected to witness a drop in growth from 5.3% to 0.6% in 2020, with revenues remaining below the $2 trillion mark.

“While the life sciences segment seems to be surviving and thriving, in certain scenarios, medical technologies and imaging are expected to be hit the hardest. Elective procedures being on hold and delayed or prolonged procurement of capital equipment will have a negative impact on revenue, from $413.9 billion to $377.1 billion for medical devices and from $31.5 billion to $18.1 billion for imaging equipment,” says Unmesh Lal, transformational health program manager. “Additionally, with telehealth transforming care delivery and health IT enhancements in analytics and interoperability, digital health will continue to thrive at a growth rate of 7.9% in 2020.”

In light of the lessons learned from the pandemic and the changing economic and business scenario, Frost & Sullivan has revisited predictions, identified top growth opportunities, and analyzed risk-mitigation measures adopted by companies to survive the remainder of 2020, including:

  1. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Indian telehealth markets have reached a tipping point with growth of more than 200% during the pandemic. Virtual consultations by healthcare professionals will become the mainstream care delivery model post-pandemic. However, reimbursement, training physicians, and platform scalability will be the key to recalibrating telehealth.
  2. Informatics and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions addressing workflow automation and operational analytics will witness 100% growth in 2020. For instance, GE Healthcare’s U.S. FDA-cleared Critical Care Suite AI tool will help radiologists prioritize critical cases. The resumption in imaging for the backlog of elective procedures in the third and fourth quarters of 2020 will result in teleradiology and AI-based solutions gaining from new investments. 
  3. The United States will have an excess of 100,000 ventilators, while Western Europe will purchase another 30,000 to 50,000 ventilators through the end of 2020. This uneven distribution across regions will redefine non-hospital and home critical-care models, while embedded analytics systems will revive the mature monitoring devices segment post-pandemic. Moreover, Resmed has launched a remote monitoring solution for ventilators in the U.S. and Europe through its cloud-based AirView platform for homecare.