Market and technology trends in IVD

In-vitro diagnostics (IVD) are essential resources used to inform around 70 percent of clinical decisions through the detection of disease, and the monitoring of a patient’s overall health. Advancements have taken the power of diagnostics to a new level. Traditionally, patients visit a doctor when something is wrong, but now it will be more about preventing diseases from breaking out.

By 2027, IVD market is expected to top USD 140 billion. Cancer testing is the fastest growing segment. Molecular cancer markers, immunohistochemistry, and HPV molecular testing are among the strongest growth areas.

A major trend in IVD is the rise of point-of-care testing (POCT) performed near the site of the patient, such as the doctor’s office or patient’s home. POCT provides significantly faster turnaround times than central or satellite laboratory testing, and is associated with much lower costs. Recent years have emphasized the need for faster, accurate, more affordable, and less invasive diagnostic tests. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, rapid at-home testing kits were indispensable tools. As the prevalence of diseases continues to rise, POCT will only become more important, particularly in remote and low-income settings.

The potential segments for growth in IVD business include drugs of abuse, immunoassays, cardiac markers, FOB HbA1c, POCT tests for inherited diseases as well as molecular testing. Molecular diagnostic will continue its upward path because laboratories that adopted platforms for Covid testing can now use those platforms for other testing, due to which non-Covid MDx will grow annually over the next few years. Covid-19 thus reinforced rather than broke the consolidation trends in the IVD market.

Interestingly, on the application front, the power of biomarkers is gaining remarkable significance. Predictive and prognostic biomarkers are driving this revolution. An early example is PSA blood test, which generates 40-percent decline in prostate cancer mortality rates. Biomarkers are also used to inform treatment decisions, helping physicians predict a patient’s response to a drug, avoid adverse side effects, and optimize treatment plans. The discovery of the HER2 gene, as a predictor of a metastatic breast cancer patient’s response to Herceptin, is a well-known example.

Moreover, the continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) market is also experiencing rapid growth, with a CAGR of 6.6 percent between 2021 and 2027. The spike in the senior population and the increasing prevalence of diabetes have been essential factors driving the CGM market’s expansion. Currently, more than 537 million adults worldwide are living with diabetes, and this number is projected to balloon more than 37 percent to 783 million people by 2045.

Over the next decade, plethora of trends will shape the IVD market. The novel technologies and evolution of new applications as well as multitude of activities by IVD companies will contribute to these.

Upward technology trends in the IVD market include the high demand for low-volume sample analysis and high-throughput screening methodologies. One emerging technology with the potential to answer these challenges is known as microfluidics – miniaturized devices that manipulate the behavior of a fluid through a series of reagents. Microfluidic devices are sometimes referred to as lab-on-a-chip due to the technology’s ability to integrate several laboratory functions on a single integrated circuit.

On the application front, tests using blood, nasal fluid, and tissue dominate the market, but the search for easier-to-collect samples continues. The pandemic heightened the interest in saliva as a convenient medium for infectious diseases. Recent studies have shown that saliva is just as effective as a nasopharyngeal swab for traditional Covid PCR tests and useful in-home rapid antigen tests. Saliva is also increasingly used to diagnose diseases affecting the mouth, esophagus, stomach, intestines, kidney, and liver.

Mergers, acquisitions, and technical collaborations amongst IVD players is also an important drive adopted by the companies in this business, which is aimed to provide more sensitive, quicker, and user-friendly solutions for end-user to meet the challenges of better diagnosis for prevention of health issues for every human being.