SUMMARY
- In 2025 expect to see seven major forces shape the life science, health and wellness industries.
- From a renewed focus on protein sequencing to the fine-tuning of AI’s role in patient-physician relationships, these trends span the breadth and depth of our industry and its broader impact on our society.
- We anticipate that this year will be marked by pivotal transitions and innovations, progressing our healthcare ecosystem and the life science industry to the next level in therapeutic decision making, actionable impacts of care, and more.
- Over the last few years, our team has identified several emerging trends that help inform our work and make a lasting impact for our clients. Read our 2024 forces here.
At the beginning of each year, the team at LINUS assesses the patterns, forces, and trends that will make a profound impact in our industry. These conversations and predictions exist at the nexus of health and life science, advising our partners and clients as they make transformative decisions that redefine life sciences, health, and wellness.
In 2025 we’re anticipating seven forces that will impact our future. From a renewed focus on protein sequencing to the impact of MRD monitoring to the fine-tuning of AI’s role in patient and physician relationships, these trends span the breadth and depth of our industry and its broader impact on our society.
Trend #1: Protein Sequencing Meets High Throughput Biology
Where DNA and RNA have dominated the discourse around sequencing, the conversations of protein sequencing — and its implications on how the market rises to the occasion — are quickly growing. Proteins are critical in understanding the molecular picture from cancer biology to neurodegenerative diseases, and we know the value these insights would bring to discovery and diagnostics alike. However, C&EN aptly points out that, “proteins are exponentially more difficult to sequence than DNA or RNA.” Recent collaborations between OLink and Element Biosciences and even Thermo Fisher Scientific’s acquisition of OLink signal evidence toward a big shift. If we use the genomics lifecycle as a guide, 2025 could be the year the field makes the transition from analog (low-throughput) to digital (high-throughput) approaches. The market is ripe for a technology to take it mainstream. And, in order to stay competitive, those who dominate the nucleic acid sequencing game are going to have to invest in R&D to make this happen.
In 2025, we expect to see a rising focus on the power of protein sequencing — and for a major player to drive that conversation through technological advancements in the life science industry.
Trend #2: Multiomics Goes Multimodal
While the impact of multiomics on our understanding of biology is profound, its utility remains limited by the silos of datasets and isolated data lakes that exist within it. To unleash the true power of multiomics requires the inclusion and utilization of real-world evidence (RWE) and clinical data. However, companies have yet to build the infrastructure and expertise to utilize these massive data sets (Deloitte). Could advancement and adoption of quantum computing be the key to integrating these datasets? The connection between multiomics, RWE, and quantum computing has the potential to elucidate more patterns and situate these results in real biological context. Such multimodal approach can finally enable companies to make new discoveries from the petabytes of data they already have, opening the door to a future where off-label use, repurposing drugs, and the development of new conjugate drugs could drive investment trends, clinical trials and tomorrow’s blockbuster therapies. Organizations like EveryCure who are committed to unlocking the hidden potential of existing drugs, or Merck’s Keytruda are examples of the potential for the power of re-purposing treatments.
In 2025, expect to see multiomics shift toward a multimodal data stream that unlocks new treatments, investments in innovation, and dark data for the sake of therapeutic progress.
Trend #3: MRD Monitoring Becomes Standard Practice
Could 2025 be the year the hype catches up with the anticipation for multi-cancer early detection (MCED) screening? Unlikely. But, investment in liquid biopsy tools are paying off with the growth of molecular residual disease (MRD) testing adoption. Over the last year in interviews with oncologists from across the globe, we’ve heard about the benefits for therapeutic decision-making and drug development. This is further validated by emerging partnerships between Merck and Personalis that boost investments in individualized therapies, rising stock prices across MRD providers like Natera and Guardant Health, as well as the recent inclusion of the first-ever MRD technology to the NCCN guidelines. This success is only enabled by synergy across multiple organizations, with players like BLOODPAC ensuring consistency across the field.
In 2025, we expect MRD monitoring to become more mainstream in making a profound impact in cancer care, further informing comprehensive treatment decisions and cancer treatment monitoring.
Trend #4: Health Tech’s Embrace of the Clinical Mandate
The initial rise of wearable technologies — fitness trackers, biometric sensors and the like — has reached its plateau. Now, health tech companies are looking beyond the utility of mainstream wearables to tap into more niche users to re-engage the wearable audience. As we look at the future of wearables, on one end of the user spectrum, we have chronic health patients who may or may not be mandated by payers to use devices to manage chronic health. On the other end, we have super-performance users who thrive in optimization and nuanced and informed decisions. This movement is further validated by health tech innovators like Oura closing on a $200 million Series D funding round with Dexcom or Ultrahuman’s commitment to sophisticated monitoring devices. This spectrum has exasperated — and possibly even eroded — those users in the middle. What’s more, the use of wearables to address the need for RWE collection (see Trend #2!) in clinical studies has yet to be fully embraced.
In 2025, we expect to see increases in investments to engage beyond mainstream wearable users and into technical cases like clinical use or super-performers seeking a central hub of data synthesis.
Trend #5: A Glaring Spotlight on Regulation, Public Health, and the Individual
While speculation on the future of public health often exists in gray areas, new leadership and administration at a national level in the U.S. will put a fierce spotlight on the future of regulation and public health. The impact on therapeutic approvals, diagnostic oversight, and drug pricing are likely to evolve over the next few years. In the shorter term, we anticipate seeing consumers play a more active role in advocating and endorsing public health decisions at the individual level. We expect to see individualized choices that are agnostic to community impact to rise in prominence, such as the impact of fluoride in public water or the loosening regulations of raw milk. This spotlight will also invite more positive conversations and reckonings around healthy habits as preventative care. In the U.S. the agony and turmoil over access to affordable and high quality healthcare and health insurance will further bring this conversation to the forefront of what public health could and should look like. This will also further the idea of ideological migrations — a future scenario we identified in our Health 2035 report — that will impact how and where care is delivered.
The decisions, leaders, and public rhetoric this year will impact public health. In 2025, we expect to see an evolution of the future of regulation, public health and the role an individual’s decisions may play both at a personal and at a community level.
Trend #6: From Fringe to Familiar: Alternative Treatments Continue to Rise
Where ‘health hacks’ and alternative forms of treatment may be seen as unconventional, in 2025 they will become increasingly more mainstream and standard. For consumers who often find the road to a healthy lifestyle difficult, slow or traditional, treatments on the periphery will go mainstream. Thanks to a combination of the boom of the impatience economy, the growing demand for weight-loss therapies like GLP-1 and how they may be repurposed for mental health or other indications, and the power of crowd sourcing and information sharing, consumers will sate their impatience for meeting health goals via alternative routes of care. While legislation, regulation and reimbursement catch up to these alternative treatments (e.g. cannabinoids or psilocybin treatments for pain or mental health diagnoses) consumers exist in a transitory state to meet their needs validated by peer-to-peer conversations and crowd sourcing, not just their primary care physician.
In 2025, expect to see alternative and holistic health replace traditional methods as acceptable forms of treatment.
Trend #7: AI as a Go-Between in the Patient-Provider Relationship
While AI in the room with a physician is not new, AI’s role as a mediator on the patient side during a healthcare visit will be on the rise.In our recent Health 2035 report, we found that young physicians expect to relegate AI’s role in their practice as one that is objective and administrative regarding AI as a scribe or aid to administrative and workflow efficiencies. In 2025, AI will not only serve the overburdened and understaffed medical team, but can also step in as an advocate or mediator for patients. Tomorrow’s primary care visits (and beyond) are dynamic — AI as a virtual assistant for BOTH sides of the patient-physician relationship could aid in building trust through information, breaking down barriers in medical literacy, and bridge communication gaps (AAMC), without meddling in the personal connections being built. Data integrity and the minimizing bias in training these models are areas that still need to be actively addressed, but the potential benefits are significant.
In 2025 we hold optimism for the impact AI will play for both the physician and the patient — closing the trust gap that currently exists in patient-physician relationships.
Here at LINUS, we orchestrate conversations at the nexus of health and life science — and everyone’s invited. Let’s talk about how these trends will impact your strategy for 2025.
Send us a note: hello@thelinusgroup.com.