Prevention & Healthcare study

Prevention is as important as cure! In this regard, lifetech.brussels, the hub.brussels cluster dedicated to healthtech companies, has commissioned the consultancy firm Deloitte to conduct a study in two parts about prevention, focusing on market benchmark and company analysis. Discover the trends! 

Preventive health care is a very broad domain with different types of prevention each impacting the patient differently and showing high potential in many different therapeutic areas (Oncology, Cardiology, Neurology, Rehabilitation…). 

The goal of the study is to better understand the market conditions and opportunities that offer the greatest potential for preventive health care solutions to succeed in the long term, by: 

• Improving the understanding of market opportunities and trends in preventive health care in Belgium and abroad 
• Identifying and analyzing successful business models in the preventive health care sector in Belgium and abroad 

This will provide Brussels-based companies with advice on strategy and business models, considering the market conditions in Belgium and abroad. 

Not enough public resources are allocated to preventive healthcare 

While there is a broad consensus that preventive healthcare is the right way forward from a patient value and cost perspective, benchmarks show that public expenditure on it is limited. 

• Even in more established markets, public spending in preventive healthcare covers only a fraction of total spending 

• Preventive healthcare requires significant spending upfront before you reap some of its benefits (mostly a healthier population) and the outcomes of preventive care always come with a delay and are at times difficult to measure and prove 
• The challenge for governments is to invest in preventive healthcare while balancing the actual needs of curing people on a day-)to-day basis 

Recommendations and tips from abroad 

Governments and private sector players can help to accelerate this trend particularly by: 

• defining the type of prevention and/or the therapeutic areas to priority focus on 
• raising awareness amongst the population and the healthcare practitioners to foster adoption 
• Improve connections among stakeholders all along the value chain 

This study is meant to be a first step in that direction.