We had just finished up analyzing 2018 data from our HospiScope database and were also reviewing trends with non-communicable diseases in Latin America, all with the goal of updating our whitepaper — 5 Mega-Trends in Latin American Healthcare — for its 2019 edition.

As such, we decided to share some of the data we’ve collected. To add even more depth to our presentation, we welcomed some top healthcare experts to comment on our findings and offer their own analyses and perspectives, including:

Bill (Guillermo) García
Director Vertical Salud
Ricoh Latin America

Patricia Ocampo
Strategy and Business Transformation
Philips

Juan Carlos Rodríguez
COO and Supply Chain Director
Fundación Cardioinfantil

This expert panel was joined by GHI’s CEO, Guillaume Corpart, and our Director of Business Development and Intelligence, Mariana Romero Roy.

Click here to download the presentation slides.

If you’d like to request a copy of our 2019 Megatrends in Latin American Healthcare report, please click here.

We hope you find the webinar interesting, and please feel free to contact us with suggestions for future webinar topics or to explore more about how our unique services suite can help you spike your sales in the Latin American healthcare market.

Optimism is certainly the name of the game for LatAm healthcare, and it pays to know which specific markets are worth keeping a closer eye on. Here are the areas we pinpointed as having major growth potential in 2019.

#1 Pharmaceuticals

We already told you that you can expect 7.9% annual growth for LatAm healthcare as a whole through 2021. When it comes to the Latin American pharmaceuticals market specifically, the news is even better, with a projected annual growth rate of 9.3% through 2028. Hand in hand with this growth is the LatAm market for pharmaceutical packaging, which Mordor Intelligence is projecting to grow from USD $5.5 billion in 2016 to $10.8 billion in 2021. That’s a compound annual growth rate of 11.87%. [2, 3]

#2 Ostomy Bags

As LatAm’s population continues to age —the population of seniors is projected by ECLAC to grow by 300% between 2015 and 2055 — ostomy bags are an important component in the fight against chronic diseases that typically affect older people, such as colorectal cancer, urinary incontinence, bladder cancer and others. Along those lines, the ostomy bag market in Latin America is projected to post 6.6% annual gains from now through 2025. [4]

#3 Wound Care Products

Another offshoot of the aging population in LatAm with an increasing incidence of chronic diseases is a rise in sales of wound care products such as dressings, wound care devices and others. The result is a projected annual growth of 6.4% in the LatAm wound care market between 2018 and 2023, for a value of USD $2.4 billion by 2023. [5]

#4 Infusion Pumps

Infusion pumps are vital equipment for elderly patients with chronic conditions, and the LatAm market is reflecting this need. The infusion pump market in Latin America is projected to grow by 6.6% annually through 2021, for a total value of USD $671.9 million by then. [6] In GHI’s report, 5 Mega-Trends in Latin American Healthcare, we noted recent growth in infusion pumps in several Latin American markets, including:

• 67% growth in infusion pumps in Guatemala
• 50% growth in infusion pumps in Puerto Rico
• 50% growth in infusion pumps in Colombia
• 36% growth in infusion pumps in Dominican Republic
• 12% growth in infusion pumps in Panama
• 11% growth in infusion pumps in Brazil
• 5% growth in infusion pumps in Mexico

#5 Clinical Laboratory Services

When diagnostic tests are performed, clinical laboratory services are utilized to process and analyze the results of these tests. And this is yet another market in LatAm that has shown growth as the LatAm population ages and the LatAm healthcare market becomes increasingly technological and sophisticated. The projected annual growth of the clinical laboratory services market in Latin America is 7.5% from 2018 through 2025. [7]

#6 Diabetes Medications

Type 2 diabetes is a major problem in LatAm that continues to grow in prevalence. The World Bank estimated that 10% of LatAm had diabetes in 2017. Overall, the World Health Organization expects the total amount of diabetics in LatAm to increase from 25 million to 40 million by 2030. In North America and the English-speaking Caribbean as a whole, the numbers should increase from 38 million to 51 million.

From this problem comes an opportunity for companies to help through medication and equipment, and that is certainly the case in the. The overall diabetes medication market in Latin America is projected to grow 6.3% annually from 2018 through 2023. [8, 9]

#7 OTC Meds

With all other forms of pharmaceutical sales on the rise in the region, it makes sense that the over-the-counter medications (OTC) market in Latin America would follow suit. Statista estimates that this market, which was worth US $8.94 billion in 2016, will shoot up to $14.7 billion by 2022. [10]

#8 Respiratory Monitoring

A final market to keep an eye on for 2019 is often overlooked, and that’s the respiratory monitoring market. With rising rates of asthma, tuberculosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in Latin America, the need for this equipment will be vital in the years ahead. Mordor Intelligence projects 10.5% annual growth in the respiratory monitoring market in Latin America through 2023. [11]

Next Steps

Contact us if you need to deepen your understanding of the healthcare growth markets in Latin America. Our In-Scope service offers customized market research for companies that need to evaluate specific sectors, obtain competitive intelligence about their rivals, explore companies that could be good partners or acquisition targets and many other aspects necessary for being successful in LatAm’s healthcare sector.

This is why we created the infographic that you can download below.

Here you’ll find a number of key data points on the non-communicable diseases that are gaining ground in Latin America, such as diabetes, cancer, kidney disease, heart disease and dementia. You’ll also have numbers on a condition that may well be a factor in the development of some of these diseases — obesity — and much more, all designed to give you a quick reference resource that you can share with colleagues.

Explore More

While this data is helpful for everyday reference, making bigger decisions — a product launch, market entry, strategic planning and business development — all require deeper market intelligence.

And every day, we deliver this kind of market intelligence to healthcare, pharmaceutical and medical device/equipment manufacturers operating in Latin America. We go beyond simple data to apply strategic analysis that in turn points the way for your company’s next steps.

Contact us to find out more how our strategic understanding of Latin American healthcare can drive your future initiatives and maximize ROI.

Section 1 of the infographic focuses on the rapidly growing Latin American medical equipment market data, with numbers showing impressive gains in different product categories, including dialysis equipment, cardiac assist devices, endoscopy equipment and more.

Section 2 of the infographic shows how specific Latin American hospital markets are posting big increases in equipment counts. This data comes from HospiScope, GHI’s enormous LatAm hospitals database. Growth areas include echocardiogram machine counts, EEG machines, nuclear medicine systems and more.
[mk_title_box color=”#71BF38″ highlight_color=”#71BF38″ highlight_opacity=”100″ size=”18″ line_height=”34″ font_weight=”inherit” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”18″ font_family=”none” align=”left”]Download infographic[/mk_title_box]

Of course, this infographic features just a small part of data found in GHI’s new whitepaper, 5 Mega-Trends in Latin American Healthcare, which you can order here.

SPIKE SALES

While data is helpful to understand market conditions, the real value is in knowing how to use it to improve sales with a more targeted approach.

Contact GHI today for 15-minute demo of HospiScope that will show you how to turn detailed data into dozens of new sales opportunities.

We noticed this while conducting healthcare research projects for different companies, and this led to us create HospiScope to track information about Latin American hospitals, as well as ShareScope for market data and In-Scope for more specific market intelligence work.

Obviously this blog is one of the ways we used to start promoting a freer flow of information in what has been kind of a data desert, but lately we have been publishing even more complimentary resources about Latin America’s medical devices and equipment market, as well as LatAm’s healthcare system.

Since you may not have heard of all of them, we wanted to let you know about them and give you direct access to them in one place.

#1 Ranking of the Best-Equipped Hospitals in Latin America, 2017

Using HospiScope data, this list shows which hospitals offer the best infrastructure in several categories, including accommodating newborns, diagnostic imaging and cardiovascular health.

#2: Latin American Hospitals Infographic

Essential data about LatAm’s hospital ecosystem offered in a handy infographic for easy reference.

#3 Whitepaper: 5 Mega-Trends in Latin American Healthcare

A highly detailed 40-page whitepaper that not only tracks some huge changes that are impacting LatAm medical care but also highlights which medical equipment and device categories are growing the most in different hospital markets during 2017, such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic Guatemala, Mexico and Peru, among others.
Easy organization makes this a great reference resource for Latin American hospital administrators, marketing and sales teams for medical device/equipment manufacturers targeting Latin America and healthcare professionals.

#4 Infographic: Data Portrait of the Medical Equipment Market in Latin America

Organized in 3 main sections, this comprehensive (50+ data points) infographic offers 2017 import data on medical equipment/devices for all of LatAm, key numbers on 2017 imports in specific markets, equipment counts for key categories in LatAm and in large and small markets in the region, as well as technology penetration data.

#5 Report: 2018 Latin American Hospital Fact Sheets

Covering 14 countries, this report offers incisive at-a-glance breakdowns on hospital infrastructure for LatAm countries, penetration rates of installed equipment in different areas and numbers on IT infrastructure in Latin American hospitals.

WHAT’S NEXT

During the summer of 2018 GHI will release its 2018 ranking of the best-equipped hospitals in Latin America, as well as infographics on surgical procedures performed in the region’s hospitals, videos, and import data for 2018, among other resources to help professionals have a detailed understanding of Latin American healthcare resources.

Overall, the Population Reference Bureau reported that the four major NCDs that are prevalent in Latin America—cardiovascular disease, most cancers, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases—will account for about 81% of all deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean by 2030.
Below we break out specific projected numbers for some of these conditions for 2030.

#1 Cancer

Cancer is a growing concern in countries throughout the world, and Latin America is certainly not an exception. If you pool the data of all the countries in South America, Central America and the Caribbean, the total number of new cancer cases in 2012 was around 1.1 million. Some of the most common cancers include breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer and lung cancer.

As these numbers are projected out to 2030, they’re estimated to grow even higher. For example, overall cancer rates for Latin America are expected to grow by 72% among men by 2030, and the cancer death rate may jump by 78% by that year. To put this in context, that equals out to more than 917,000 cases of cancer in 2030 among Latin American men, with more than 557,000 deaths. For women in Latin America, in 2030 cancer rates are expected to increase by 62%, with a 74% increase in mortality.

#2 Dementia (including Alzheimer’s Disease)

One good bit of news about overall health in Latin America is that life expectancy is increasing overall. One estimate puts the current life expectancy for Latin Americans at 75 years old. But with an older population comes an increase in certain non-communicable diseases such as Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

A report from Bupa estimated that 7.8 million people in the Americas (North and South America, as well as the Caribbean) were suffering from dementia in 2010 and projected that this amount would double to 14.8 million by 2030.

And future projections suggest even more growth: in addition, the 2017 report Dementia in Latin America: Epidemiological Evidence and Implications for Public Policy indicated that the number of people in Latin America with dementia will rise from 7.8 million in 2013 to more than 27 million by 2050.

#3 Obesity

Obesity has been a struggle for a while now in Latin American countries, and those issues are only expected to increase in the coming years. Rates of overweight and obesity in Latin America are already some of the highest in the world. And by 2030, it’s projected that more than 50 percent of all Latin American males and 60 percent of females will be overweight or obese.

#4 Diabetes

One unfortunate side effect of obesity in many cases is the onset of diabetes, and this appears to be a growing concern in the years ahead, as well. According to PAHO/WHO, the number of people in Latin America that suffer from diabetes is expected to increase from 25 million to 40 million by 2030.

More Challenges Ahead

Of course, these four conditions are far from the only challenges that will face Latin Americans — and their healthcare systems — by 2030. While projections have not yet been widely published and disseminated for all of these conditions, a number of diseases that are impacting the Latin American population now are likely to impact it significantly in 2030.

One huge one would be heart disease. Though there’s no published projection of the amount of people who will suffer from heart disease in Latin America in 2030, it’s known that currently 20-40% of Latin Americas suffer from high blood pressure, one of the major risk factors for heart disease, along with overweight/obesity, which we’ve already covered above. In addition, recent research from Deloitte and Novartis indicated that the four heart conditions (heart attack, heart failure, atrial fibrillation and hypertension) affect nearly 90 million people in Latin America — 27.7% of the population. Moreover, the economic burden of these four heart conditions in LatAm totaled more than US$30.9 billion in 2015.

Besides heart disease, other conditions currently impacting LatAm that are likely to impact it further by 2030, despite the lack of projections for incidence in that year. These would include
kidney disease (LatAm has the highest death rate from chronic kidney disease in the world), Parkinson’s disease and respiratory conditions like chronic pulmonary obstructive disorder and asthma, which affects up to 1 in 3 children in Peru and is quite prevalent in many countries.

Rising to the Challenge

Through HospiScope, which tracks demographic data about Latin American hospitals, we’ve noticed significant increases in medical equipment and devices in Latin American hospitals in recent years, both from 2016 to 2017 and between 2015 and 2017. We’ve written about some of these increases in other articles, covering specific countries. This suggests that Latin American hospitals are doing their best to meet the challenge from these illness by acquiring more equipment that helps diagnose and treat these conditions, such as hemodialysis machines, respiratory equipment, endoscopy machines, CT scanners, infusion pumps and much more.

We cover the increase in equipment counts in Latin American hospitals our new whitepaper, 5 Mega-Trends in Latin American Healthcare, set to be published in late March of 2018.

To find out how you can use HospiScope to identify potential sales opportunities with specific hospitals that are adding specific types of equipment, please contact us.