Deloitte model explores growth opportunity in US women’s health – Press release | Deloitte US

New York, Sept. 29, 2026

Key takeaways

• Prevention could expand health span: Under a prevention and improved disease-management scenario, women's health span could potentially increase by up to 20 years in the long-run model.
• Proactive care presents a potential half-trillion-dollar modeled demand opportunity: Deloitte analysis estimates that shifting healthcare from reactive to proactive, life-stage-aware care may create $527 billion in additional potential spending on U.S. women's health in 2030 as compared to the modeled baseline trajectory.
• Clinical needs and market demand are converging: Among 22 care areas, four of them - brain health, pelvic health, cardiovascular care, and musculoskeletal/autoimmune conditions - illustrate where unmet needs and market demand may converge.

Why this matters

Deloitte's Future of Health framework suggests that moving from reactive treatment toward more proactive, individualized care may improve patient health and help healthcare resources work more effectively. In this analysis, Deloitte's actuarial Future of Health modeling approach - which uses five years of medical and pharmacy claims data from nearly 60 million lives - was adapted to compare baseline spending trajectory with a scenario that assumes prevention, earlier detection and improved management.

The resulting report, "How a $527 billion growth opportunity in women's health can improve health outcomes," explores how earlier, life-stage-aware interventions may improve women's health outcomes while supporting sustainable market growth.

Deloitte's analysis indicates that risk does not appear distributed evenly across women's life stages, and some of the greatest clinical and financial gains may come from intervening earlier. Reproductive years and midlife represent important windows where earlier recognition, prevention and improved management may help reduce disease progression and avoid more severe chronic disease later in life.

Key quotes

By increasing focus on proactive, life-stage-aware health interventions to address unmet needs, the health industry may add up to 20 years of healthy life span for women. This transition supports the potential for improved clinical outcomes across a lifetime, greater economic vitality across the broader healthcare ecosystem, and enhanced quality of life for patients.

- Kulleni Gebreyes, MD, principal, vice chair and U.S. life sciences and healthcare industry leader, Deloitte

The modeled $527 billion shift represents a demand-generated signal for investors and medtech, pharma and digital health innovators to consider scaling platforms such as continuous monitoring and early diagnostic technologies. By deploying these lower-friction tools to diagnose earlier, the industry can drive sustainable investments while fundamentally improving how women and their care teams navigate their lifelong health journeys.

- Jen Radin, MPH, senior life sciences and healthcare principal, Deloitte

Four clinical focus areas illustrating where unmet needs and market demand may converge

Women's health is often framed around reproductive care, but this report organizes the market into three overlapping pillars: conditions that disproportionately affect women, conditions that present differently in women, and conditions linked to female biology across life stages. The report highlights four categories that fall into one or more of these pillars where unmet patient needs and emerging market technologies appear to be converging to create modeled additional potential spending:

• Brain and neurological conditions ($44 billion market): Biological and hormonal factors are associated with some related symptoms and disease activity. Improving neurological care at scale may depend on translating insights about sex-specific biology and life-stage factors into earlier, more accessible interventions such as using blood-based biomarkers.
• Pelvic, reproductive and hormonal health ($21 billion market): Conditions such as polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) and cervical cancer are seeing shifts toward consumer-driven diagnostics - such as at-home self-collection devices - and research into metabolic treatments like GLP-1 receptor agonists.
• Cardiovascular health and stroke ($49 billion market): Hormonal changes, pregnancy history, and other risk factors can potentially play a role in women's cardiovascular care needs. Innovation is moving toward sex-specific diagnostics, including AI-enabled cardiovascular screening integrated into routine mammography workflows, and continuous wearable monitoring tools.
• Musculoskeletal, autoimmune and inflammatory health ($56 billion market): Disorders within this category often disproportionately affect women. Shifts underway include AI-enabled software used to screen routine hip and pelvis X-rays for early signs of low bone density, while the pharmaceutical pipeline expands to include disease-modifying therapies for joint degeneration.

Shifting care closer to the individual can create new options for ecosystem stakeholders

There are practical considerations for stakeholders seeking to design solutions around women's evolving biological needs across life stages:

• Medtech and pharmaceutical companies can embed sex-specific biological insights into early-stage product design and strengthen real-world evidence.
• Health plans and employers can consider benefit designs to facilitate early preventive screenings and reduce out-of-pocket costs, helping avoid costly downstream acute care.
• Investors can direct capital toward scalable, repeatable platforms that advance sex-specific diagnostics and treatments to help address unmet demand through innovation and investment.
• Consumer health organizations can design accessible, daily-use services that support women through life-stage transitions, such as pregnancy and menopause.

Methodology

This analysis adapts Deloitte's actuarial Future of Health modeling approach, which uses five years of medical and pharmacy claims data from nearly 60 million lives. Medical and pharmacy claims from 2019 and 2023 were classified into four categories and 22 disease states then scaled to represent the broader U.S. population. The modeled 2030 projections compare a baseline trajectory, which assumes current trends continue with an intervention scenario focused on targeted investments in prevention, earlier detection, and improved disease management.