2023 will be a pivotal year for many diagnostic companies as they move away from Covid-19 testing to other ventures. Companies are looking to diversify offers, use research from Covid-19 test development into other tests, and reinvest R&D into other diseases. We will see a shift towards companies producing rapid tests and home testing kits that can be used by the public and a focus on point-of-care (POC) tests as opposed to laboratory tests.
GlobalData predicts that Covid-19 testing and other related products will continue to drop in 2023. Large diagnostic companies such as Abbot, , Labcorp, BD, and Roche made statements at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference on the significant drops in Covid-19 tests and related products in 2022. Danaher redefined the 鈥渂ase of business core sales growth鈥� to exclude Covid-19 testing from their revenue as the continued decline of Covid-19 would highly impact their revenue reporting. Abbott highlighted that although there will be a drop in Covid-19 testing alone, there will be increased testing in respiratory diseases such as multiparameter tests to differentiate between Covid-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus. However, they stressed that the growth will be close to pre-pandemic growth, implying that we will not see a huge spike in revenue as seen in 2020 and 2021. These changes are indicative of a shrinking Covid-19 market. Therefore, many of these companies are shifting their R&D towards developing POC tests and over-the-counter tests to not only decrease turnover time on test results but to also cater to more individuals who are interested in getting involved in their own healthcare.
