Public Health

As part of the report Prioritizing health: A prescription for prosperity, the McKinsey Global Institute identified ten promising innovations, now in progress, that could have a material impact on health by 2040. Focusing on technologies that address the greatest unmet needs, we determined the impact of these innovations by interviewing experts and evaluating the current biological understanding of each disease, as well as the effort and excitement surrounding the new techniques as measured by funding.

Identifying and sizing the potential scope of innovations now in the pipeline is inherently difficult, but we estimate that these technologies could reduce the burden of disease by a further 6 to 10 percent, assuming aspirational yet realistic adoption rates by 2040 on top of the 40 percent from known interventions. Some of these innovations could not only fully cure a number of diseases but also significantly extend healthy lifespans by tackling the underlying biology of aging and therefore postponing the onset of several age-related conditions. These possibilities make a sharp contrast with the innovations of the past 30 years, many of which reduced the symptoms or delayed the progression of diseases but rarely prevented or cured them. In addition, the innovations we have identified here are more digitally enabled than those of the past; for example, artificial intelligence (AI) systems make advances in omics and molecular technologies, such as gene editing, faster and more accurate.