The Top 18 Healthcare Trends of 2025

Rising healthcare demand due to aging population

An increased demand for healthcare services is expected due to demographic shifts like daily retirement of 10,000 Americans. This group tends to reduce spending on almost everything except healthcare. In fact, the average healthcare spend of 75+ demographic is almost 2.5x that of the 45-54 demographic.

Continuous glucose monitoring continues to grow in popularity

Consumers today expect instant feedback in all areas of their life, including their health. Continuous glucose monitors are one example of how the medical industry is responding to this shift, offering a convenient way for the more than 38 million Americans with diabetes to monitor their health.

The wearable device allows users to track their glucose levels throughout the day, and overnight, without needing to prick their finger. As well, there’s typically a lag between a diabetic eating a meal and the subsequent effects, making it harder to implement behavioral changes and instant feedback drives far better outcomes. Better outcomes means happier users and makes continued use more likely.

Dexcom, a leader in the space, has seen its stock price skyrocket since its newest monitors got FDA approval in early 2018. Not only is the prediabetic US population growing (currently over 100 million), but biohackers are also keenly interested in the devices, and have pushed to find ways to get their hands on them through unofficial channels like eBay and overseas markets.

Motherhood delay grows alongside corporate push for fertility benefits

For the first time in history, more American women are having children in their thirties than in their twenties. The shift to later births is both a cause and effect of more women in the workforce, and it has increased demand for fertility-related services. 76,000 women froze their eggs in 2018, up a staggering 15x from 2013.

Companies like Kindbody partner with companies to offer healthcare benefits like in-vitro fertilization and egg freezing, a much-discussed benefit at big tech companies like Google and Facebook. Companies have two reasons for offering these benefits. Most clearly, benefits tend to be specifically appealing in a way that cash compensation is not: they invite someone to imagine a specific scenario where those benefits would make a difference in their lives. More cynically, since the cost of recruiting new employees is high, and since some people leave the workforce either temporarily or permanently after having kids, offering healthcare benefits that encourage having kids later can be a profitable choice.

Many HR leaders report that this is particularly impactful for companies that are trying to improve their diversity numbers and that fertility benefits give them both a way to attract more women and a way to reduce attrition. Historically, egg freezing was primarily for women undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy but has since expanded into a way to have more control over when to have kids.

Wearable health devices give users more data

The popularity of Apple Watches and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) highlights a trend towards self-monitoring in health. Consumers use these devices to track various health metrics like heart rate, sleep quality, and blood glucose levels, aiming to meet personal fitness goals and manage health conditions more effectively.

Rise of telemedicine and virtual care

The rise of telemedicine reflects growing demand for convenient, accessible healthcare, enabling remote consultations and expanding services to underserved areas.

Easy-to-hold products rise in demand as arthritis grips an aging population

Shifts in the health of a population don’t only affect the healthcare industry. On the contrary, they can affect markets as remote and seemingly unrelated as home improvement.

Diagnoses of arthritis have increased 132.2% worldwide over the past 35 years and are predicted to continue growing through 2050. With increasing numbers of people losing hand dexterity and strength, some surprising markets are seeing surges in demand.

While the electric screwdriver has been a DIY essential for many years, this basic gadget is now more popular than ever. The market is expected to be worth over $500 million by 2032 and is largely powered by industrial demand and DIY buyers.

For DIY-ers, electric drivers make home improvement more accessible, reducing repetitive strain and the compressive forces on small joints, leading to less discomfort for the growing number of people suffering from arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and tendonitis.

For similar reasons, ergonomic products in other categories are gaining popularity — from electric pepper grinders on the dinner table to continuous spray bottles for cutting hair.

With the proportion of the global population aged 60 and over expected to double by 2050, this trend will likely roll on for years to come.

The rise of just-in-time healthcare staffing solutions

The pandemic caused an unprecedented bifurcation in the healthcare industry. Elective procedures, where hospitals make most of their margin, were down, and emergency procedures were up. With spikes in demand for certain healthcare roles, alongside furloughs and layoffs for others, there began a growing dislocation in the healthcare job market that is increasingly well served by staffing agencies like connectRN, which focuses on temporary nursing jobs.

The spread of the virus in different areas at different rates also made just-in-time labor deployment more important than ever. And even after the pandemic, just-in-time labor is growing increasingly practical. Meanwhile, the number of medical operations available keeps rising as new technologies get invented and awareness of existing procedures grows.

Certain demographic trends are also particularly favorable for staffing agencies. Some towns age much faster than average, as young people leave, so their hospitals end up short-staffed even as demand rises. Every day, 10,000 Americans retire, and start spending less on nearly everything except healthcare where the average spend for the 75+ demographic is almost 2.5x that of the 45-54 demographic.

Expensive healthcare equipment goes in-home as costs come down

Every minute without defibrillator treatment after a cardiac arrest reduces a person’s chance of survival by 10%.

AEDs – which are battery-powered – benefit from the continuous improvements to cost and weight, essentially subsidized by the highly-funded arms race between companies in industries like phones, electric vehicles, and drones. The price per kilowatt-hour of lithium-ion batteries has dropped by 97% since 1991 and as more products become battery-powered, scale drives further cost and weight decreases.

As these changing dynamics make home AEDs more realistic, a growing number of consumers are taking matters into their own hands and buying the life-saving device.

As people continue to live longer, demand for home AEDs is likely to continue growing. The devices are also proving popular with people without health insurance, for whom the cost of an ambulance would be punishing.

Online patient portals on the rise

Patient portals, online portals where patients can check their medical records, usually after a doctors' visit, are growing in popularity though there's some asymmetry in this growth.

The percent of healthcare providers who offer patient portals is growing quickly - nearly 90% as of this year. However, uptake on the consumer side has been more gradual.

Because the portal is used mostly after infrequent doctors' visits, like an annual checkup, engagement frequency is low so it's rare that logging in turns into a habit. As patient portals expand beyond infrequent doctors' visits and start to include more tools for visibility into daily health data, engagement may rise and usage may become more second.

A portion of consumers also avoid using the portals because they want to talk directly with their doctor. Stemming from a desire for comfort, this will start to change, as we've seen happen in the telemedicine industry where consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable with virtual visits to the doctor.