The life sciences industry’s biochemical focus isn’t working for patients

The life sciences industry is experiencing an identity crisis. 

Despite great scientific innovation in the past decade and the highest per capita expenditure on health care in the world, U.S. patients are struggling. Obesity has more than doubled since the 1990s and has quadrupled in adolescents, anxiety and depression continue to rise, cancer rates and heart failure deaths have drastically increased in young adults, and health disparities persist as an economic and moral burden. 

The life sciences industry has a unique social contract with the public, given its role in developing and commercializing therapies and diagnostics, public funding granted for its trials, and guaranteed patent terms for its innovations. To fulfill its end of the contract, the industry must step up to reduce the gap between health care spending and outcomes.