Interview with an Expert: Key trends defining the future of healthcare in 2026 and beyond?

Ask the Expert Series | May 2026

Interviewer: Katie Warwick, Senior Vice President, Hall & Partners
Expert: Darja Irdam, Partner, Global Head of Life Sciences Innovation, Hall & Partners

Healthcare is moving upstream. In this edition of Hall & Partners' Interview with an Expert series, Katie Warwick speaks with Darja Irdam and explores the shifts reshaping health and life sciences, from microbiome science and precision prevention to the tension between AI-accelerated discovery and irreplaceable human insight.

Looking ahead: What healthcare tends will shape the industry through 2026?

Q1: What emerging trends will define the future of healthcare — and where is the industry least prepared?

Three stand out:

• The microbiome is becoming an important therapeutic category, approved therapies for recurrent C. difficile infection signal this is no longer just a scientific frontier. The challenge: separating clinically meaningful interventions from consumer hype.

• Precision cardiovascular prevention is changing risk conversations. Lp(a) explains why apparently healthy people still experience cardiovascular events.. The 2026 ACC/AHA dyslipidemia guideline explicitly includes Lp(a) testing, reshaping how we approach inherited risk and hidden vulnerability.

• Prevention and disease interception are moving upstream across oncology, Alzheimer's, rare disease, and cardiometabolic health. Cancer vaccines, early diagnostics, and cell and gene therapies share one thread: intervening earlier, before irreversible damage is done.

The area the industry is least prepared for is the economics and behavior change required for prevention at scale. Antimicrobial resistance is one of the key warning shots, showing what happens when clinical need is enormous but commercial models and global coordination aren't fit for purpose.

Opportunities and challenges in health and life sciences in 2026

Q2: What are the biggest opportunities and structural challenges facing the sector?

AI, real-world data, and advanced diagnostics working together to discover faster and understand disease more precisely. The FDA's 2025 draft guidance on AI in drug and biological products signals this has moved from experimentation into serious regulatory territory. The biggest risk is trading off speed for understanding.

Q3: Which shifts in consumer behavior are accelerating fastest, and where does execution fall short?

Patients now arrive with information from social media, wearables, and AI tools. The industry has responded: more comprehensive and actually usable patient support programs, stronger use of patient-reported outcomes, greater regulatory emphasis on patient involvement. But it still thinks in products, pathways, and messages. Patients don't experience healthcare in therapeutic-area silos. Instead, patients struggle with friction, fear, hope, cost, and trust. Pharma companies and products that map and respond to that full ecosystem will consistently outperform those that optimise the message alone.

How can insights help healthcare organisations anticipate trends and make smarter decisions?

Q4: Where does insight make the biggest strategic difference?

Insight separates signal from noise, humanises strategy, and de-risks decision-making. The most valuable signals often appear earliest: in how physicians describe uncertainty, in the questions patients ask before diagnosis, in caregiver workarounds, in KOL language, and in the gap between what guidelines recommend and what happens in a ten-minute consultation.

For smarter strategic decisions, insights should influence the whole lifecycle:

1. Asset development and trial design: which problem are we solving, and for whom?

2. Launch sequencing and positioning:what will stop adoption, and what evidence will change behavior?

3. Medical education and patient support: what does the lived experience actually require?

4. Access strategy: where are the friction points between clinical value and real-world access?

Q5. What must the health sector rethink to stay relevant?

The sector needs to rethink healthcare as shared infrastructure, not a luxury good. In aging societies, the question is no longer simply lifespan; it's healthy lifespan. If growing numbers of people are living with preventable chronic disease, healthcare systems become unsustainable. Medicines can't deliver their full value if patients are diagnosed late or can't navigate the system around them.

Key Takeaways

• Healthcare is moving upstream: from treating advanced disease to intercepting risk earlier

• The industry's biggest unpreparedness is the economics and behavior change required for prevention at scale

• AI accelerates pattern recognition but can't replace human insight into clinical decision-making and access barriers

• Patients experience healthcare as a full ecosystem, not as a brand strategy or therapeutic pathway

• Access, prevention, and equity must be designed into strategy from the start, not treated as downstream issues

Conclusion

The future of healthcare will belong to organisations that combine scientific sophistication with human understanding. At Hall & Partners, we help health and life sciences organisations move beyond data volume toward human signals, understanding the drivers that determine whether innovation actually reaches the patients who need it most.