How will we know if the life sciences sector is advancing in 2025?

This is the question asked at the start of the report, a Research Brief: 2025 Indicators of Progress for the Life Sciences Sector, from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science (IQVIA).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To answer that question, IQVIA identified ten indicators for this 2025 profile on the life sciences sector. I selected four key data points for this discussion which provide particularly informative insights for my advisory work right now at the intersection of health, people/consumers, and technology:

  • Trust for/with/in life science companies
  • Patient access to health care services
  • Progress on the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, and,
  • Focus on disease prevention and early intervention.

We start with the state of trust held by U.S. consumers for the industries people deal with in daily life, shown in the first bar graph from the Gallup Poll. For more on this study, see my post on the study here.

As IQVIA succinctly calls out about the importance of trust and life sciences,

“This lack of positive reputation reflects general perceptions that pharmaceutical manufacturers are prioritizing profits over advances in patient and public health that have been amplified by actions such as off-label marketing, overcharging government programs, and concealing data.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Data point two: patient access to health care services can be fragmented and inconsistent depending on several factors — especially having health insurance, having a usual source for primary care, and living in a community with retail pharmacies (versus a neighborhood considered a pharmacy desert).

The second chart from the IQVIA report is based on the organization’s data that tracks consumers’ use of retail pharmacy, which IQVIA uses as a proxy for patient access. Three metrics describe the patient access story here, with all lines pointing downward: for number of pharmacies, active prescribers per 100,000 population, and per capita prescription growth (with declines in new-to-brand prescriptions [NBRx] and flat total prescription volume). s

 

 

 

 

 

 

The third IQVIA life science progress data point I’m adding into our mix here is what the organization refers to as progress on the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, or MAHA for short. The acronym has been embraced by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. POTUS has embraced a “MAHA agenda” at this preliminary stage in the administration, although we do not have much meat on the agenda’s bones yet. IQVIA’s read on MAHA for industry progress is that MAHA would adopt an “inclusive approach” that would involve private/public funding focused on prevention and research into understanding disease etiology.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, my fourth chosen data point is a focus on disease prevention and early intervention, which I believe relates to the third “MAHA” agenda point. disease prevention and health promotion are indeed health-building strategies for the public’s health.

The metric illustrated here in the fourth chart from the report shows us that childhood vaccination rates continued to decline in the 2023-24 school year, discussed in a Kaiser Family Foundation report published in November 2004.

Compared with vaccination rates from the 2019-20 school year, the number of states with childhood vaccination rates 95% and over reduced by nearly half in school year 2023-24 from 20 states to 11,

In 2023-24, 25 states had childhood vaccination rates ranging between 90 and 94.9%, and fewer than 90% of school aged kids were vaccinated in 14 states.

Health Populi’s Hot Points:  Through my lens firmly focused on consumers, patients, caregivers, health citizens all + health and well-being + technology, I’ve presented you with 4 of IQVIA’s 10 factors shaping life science sector progress in 2025. To put a fine point on these,

  1. Trust is eroding for pharma and for most sectors in health care — except for peoples’ relationships with their personal physicians, and on a more macros level, nurses at the top of the honesty-and-ethics list above all U.S. professions
  2. Patient access to health care is also slimming down for some services, depending on health consumers’ access to primary care, health insurance (especially plans that are fully insured and less dependent on high deductibles), and living in ZIP codes with convenient-to-access services and channels
  3. Progress on health promotion and disease prevention is less-than terrific, given barriers to receiving primary care, testing, labs, imaging, and convenient channels to those services that don’t compromise peoples’ time away from work or caring for the home; and,
  4. Vaccination rates are down with mis- and dis-information lessening peoples’ trust in science, public health institutions (at all levels – Federal, State, and Local), government, and media (mass and social).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the KFF report on childhood vaccination rates (linked above) notes,

“Whether and how these trends are affected by the change in Presidential administration remains to be seen. While states and local jurisdictions, not the federal government, set vaccine requirements for school children, the federal government has a long-standing, evidence-based systen for approving and recommending vaccines for the public, including the childhood vaccination schedule, which is used by states, pediatricians, and parents….If the Trump administration chooses to question or reject vaccine evidence, seeks to change the current system for recommending vaccines, or otherwise pressures states to make different decisions, it could further drive down vaccination rates among children.”

This map comes from the KFF analysis, telling us that over three-quarters of states had MMR vaccination rats for kindergartners below the Healthy People target of 95% in the 2023-24 school year.

I listened with concentration this week to the two Senate Committee confirmation hearings on the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., testifying in front of elected officials on Day 1 to the Senate Finance Committee and on Day 2 to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. I was particularly impressed with the dialogue between Senator Bill Cassidy, MD (Republican-LA) and RFK Jr. at the concluding minutes of the HELP meeting on 30th January.

Dr. Cassidy is a physician who relayed a real-life medical update noting two young people died in his state due to vaccine-preventable diseases.

I wrote Dr. Cassidy, via his Senate portal, earlier today to express my empathy and regard for him in this exchange: I was moved by his being torn between his political ideology and his profession as a physician. He knows physicians are trusted touchpoints for patients and his bias toward science facts brightly shone.

The tension I see in the MAHA vis-a-vis vaccination/prevention pillars discussed here is something that really struck me as I reviewed the IQVIA 2025 update on life science progress. Trust, science fact, and leadership are all part of the solution to Making America Healthy. That’s how we advance life sciences, and how we assure Healthy People.

As Senator-Dr, Cassidy said in his concluding remarks with RFK, Jr.,

“You have the power to help rebuild —to help public health institutions re-earn the trust of the American people.”