What do life science companies actually do?

Ever better, more innovative, more targeted, and more far-reaching – these are all typical keywords of companies that keep developing new products. This development affects both startups and established (large) corporations. Amid all these new technologies and fields of application, the term life sciences comes up again and again. What exactly are life sciences, and what makes a company an innovative life science company?

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What does life science actually mean?

The life sciences are an interconnection of interdisciplinary research fields. They include companies in biotechnology, medical technology, and pharmaceuticals – quite a broad spectrum, then. Fields of application in which life science companies operate include, for example, artificial intelligence, biosensors, skin scanning, LASIK, patient monitoring, and many more. At XO Life, we have created an innovative, interactive, multidimensional communication platform for patient insights on therapies, which means that we, too, can be counted among the life science companies in medical technology. Since patient monitoring, among other things, is part of medical technology, the question naturally arises as to what else is being developed in medical technology within the life sciences.

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Life science companies in medical technology:

The medical technology side is often limited to developing new devices and technologies driven by the increasingly complex needs of patients, doctors, pharmacists, and the pharmaceutical industry.

Typical research and development fields of life science companies include the development of instruments for the diagnosis, prevention, monitoring, and treatment of medical conditions. Such medical devices are either virtual or physical in nature, so they can be, for example, a machine, an implant, or software.

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Life science analytics

One example of software is the life science analytics category. This is primarily where companies operate that specialize in collecting, analyzing, and making use of medical data. Reducing healthcare costs, improving therapy outcomes, and 24/7 access to health information are the three main drivers of this segment.

“Incidentally, the global life science analytics market is expected to be worth $18.12 billion by 2030.”^[1]                                             (by comparison, in 2019 it was worth $7.57 billion)

In addition to many startups like XO Life, leading tech giants are also increasingly moving into the life sciences to redefine healthcare. So far, however, none of these companies has focused more closely on the patient side. XO Life is picking up on this trend and has set itself the goal of making patient needs more accessible to life science companies so that patients receive the best possible therapy. By collecting and analyzing millions of pieces of patient information, we create robust real-world evidence, meaning genuine evidence straight from real-world care, in order to redefine healthcare and equip it for the future.

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What is the future of the life sciences?

The first steps in the right direction have already been taken. The first startups with enormous potential – such as XO Life – are already working intensively on the right development and delivery of new technologies, while large tech corporations are also moving into the industry alongside large pharmaceutical and healthcare companies. As a result, better tools and processes are being developed ever faster to bring all stakeholders, i.e., pharmaceutical companies, doctors, and pharmacists, closer to the needs of their customers and patients.^[2] Real-world evidence from patient insights, as provided by XO Life, is ideally suited to this.

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Sources:

^[1] Precedence Research. 2021. Life Science Analytics Market to Garner Growth 8.25% by 2030. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/02/11/2174352/0/en/Life-Science-Analytics-Market-to-Garner-Growth-8-25-by-2030.html

^[2] Shalini Sharad. n.d. PharmD. The Role of Analytics in the Life Sciences Industry. https://www.wipro.com/pharmaceutical-and-life-sciences/the-role-of-analytics-in-the-life-sciences-industry/