5 diagnostic innovations driving the future of patient experience

• Diagnostic innovations are reshaping patient care, offering fundamentally more accessible, comfortable, personalized, and proactive testing solutions

• Less invasive, more accessible diagnostics can mitigate physical and emotional barriers to testing and facilitate earlier diagnosis and better monitoring

• The growth of diagnostics in decentralized settings is a huge step forward for patient access, offering convenience, minimizing wait times, and reducing individual and system-level costs

Healthcare systems worldwide face immense pressure, driven by rising demand, increasing costs, and the complexity of managing long-term conditions.^1,2 To meet these challenges, the next major step in healthcare transformation requires not just advances in treatment, but also diagnostic innovations that can enhance access, reduce economic burden, and improve quality of life. As we reflect on the diagnostic breakthroughs of 2025, five key innovations stand out for the way they are addressing these problems and reshaping how patients experience healthcare:

1. HPV self-collection

2. Blood-based biomarker testing for Alzheimer’s disease

3. Portable, multi-test Point of Care Testing (POCT) platforms

4. Predictive continuous glucose monitoring (CGM)

5. Automated and standardized mass spectrometry

These innovations share a common thread: they are shifting diagnostics from being inconvenient, uncomfortable, and reactive, to being accessible, comfortable, highly personalized, and proactive. By reducing barriers to care and offering quicker, more accurate information, they also provide significant economic benefits for patients, providers, and payers, cementing a powerful win-win for the entire healthcare ecosystem.

For many sensitive conditions, the physical or psychological burdens associated with receiving a diagnosis are significant barriers to care, leading to widespread underdiagnosis.^3,4 Diagnostic innovations can mitigate these challenges by making it physically and emotionally more comfortable to get tested, which can go a long way in overcoming testing barriers that are caused by fear and stigma around certain diseases.

1. HPV self-collection

Cervical cancer screening, for example, can present physical and emotional barriers for many individuals. Aside from economic considerations (e.g. taking time off work, health insurance coverage), reluctance to be screened can be tied to the fear of the speculum, religious or cultural beliefs, or previous experiences of sexual trauma.⁵ HPV self-collection directly addresses many of the significant physical and psychological barriers that prevent participation in cervical cancer screening.

By using a soft-tipped swab that allows patients to collect the vaginal sample themselves, HPV self-collection is less invasive, more private, and more comfortable than the traditional speculum-based collection methods. Crucially, HPV self-collection screening has been shown to offer comparable accuracy to clinician-collected samples.⁶

2. Blood-based biomarker testing for Alzheimer’s disease

A very different disease, but one which also suffers globally from fear and stigma associated with diagnosis, is Alzheimer’s disease. An estimated 75% of those affected by Alzheimer’s worldwide are currently living without a diagnosis.³ Barriers to a confirmation of Alzheimer’s disease, like those of cervical cancer, are multi-layered, including both individual factors (e.g. cost concerns, fear of finding out, resistance to painful procedures), and structural factors stemming from the healthcare system itself.⁷

An Alzheimer’s diagnosis traditionally relies on cognitive screening tests and confirmatory procedures that are costly and invasive: PET scans or lumbar punctures (CSF tests). These methods are impractical for widespread early detection, creating system-level bottlenecks that prevent critical early diagnoses. The advent of blood-based biomarkers revolutionizes this process, offering a simple blood draw as a less invasive, more cost-effective alternative that facilitates early detection and increases access to care. Because early intervention significantly improves outcomes when it comes to Alzheimer's, the knowledge that Alzheimer’s can be diagnosed many years before the presentation of symptoms is critical for changing negative attitudes towards the disease.⁸

By creating less-invasive, more cost-effective, and more accessible testing procedures, we can enhance screening rates for sensitive conditions like cervical cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. This is not only a game-changer for patients and their families; it creates a significant positive impact at the societal level as well. For Alzheimer’s, the cost of the disease is expected to reach $8.5 trillion globally by 2040.⁹ Preventing cervical cancer is estimated to generate up to $30 billion dollars for the global economy over the next 25 years.¹⁰ Preventing these diseases is therefore a critical imperative for the global economy.¹¹

A major trend driving patient satisfaction and system efficiency is the growth of diagnostics that can be administered closer to the patient.¹² This expansion of accessibility and convenience is characterized by advances in Point of Care Testing (POCT), enabling testing in decentralized settings.

Yet another key advantage of HPV self-collection is that it separates sample collection from lab processing. In doing so, this testing method can be deployed in a variety of decentralized care settings—clinics, pharmacies, mobile units, or community health events.⁶ Similarly, while blood-based biomarkers for Alzheimer’s will initially be adopted in specialist settings, these tests are expected to become available in primary care clinics, easing pressure on specialists and enabling earlier, more equitable diagnoses.⁸

3. Portable, multi-test POCT platforms

But HPV self-collection and blood-based biomarkers for Alzheimer’s aren’t the only diagnostic innovations looking to make waves in the POCT space. Other advances in POCT include multi-test platforms propelled by advancements in miniaturization. The development of portable, easy-to-use, diagnostic testing devices mean that decentralized care settings, even in rural and remote areas, can provide patients with rapid, reliable results on a wide range of conditions through a simple finger prick or swab. Tests that were once exclusively performed in a centralized hospital lab, such as those for blood clots, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and cardiovascular disease, can now take place at a local pharmacy.¹³ Delivering immediate results in places that haven’t traditionally had access to a wide range of tests, and in places where everyday care happens, is a huge step forward for patients, offering unprecedented convenience, minimizing the anxiety of wait times, and reducing the cost of travel and multiple doctor visits.¹⁴

For healthcare systems, this decentralized approach can also be economically beneficial. By "frontloading the system" and putting more diagnostics into the community, the economic burden shifts away from more expensive secondary and emergency care, leading to lower overall costs, reduced hospitalizations, and fewer follow-up visits.^15-17

Beyond accessibility, diagnostic innovations are becoming more precise, making care safer and more personalized, particularly for individuals managing long-term or critical conditions. Greater precision in diagnostics is also accelerating through the integration of AI technologies, which are quickly becoming part of the roadmap for the patient experience of the future.

4. AI-enabled Continuous Glucose Monitoring

For millions of people living with diabetes across the globe, AI-enabled predictive continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) represents a paradigm shift. Conventional glucose monitoring methods, which primarily display past or present glucose values, inherently limit users to a reactive approach to diabetes management. AI-enabled predictive CGM, on the other hand, forecasts where glucose levels are headed, allowing patients to take corrective action before an incident occurs.^18-20 This proactive self-management dramatically reduces the mental burden and pressure associated with self-monitoring, and has the potential to improve glycemic control.²¹ In particular, a constant source of anxiety for people living with diabetes is nocturnal hypoglycemia, an episode of very low blood sugar levels that can have fatal consequences. Understandably, the fear of such an incident can cause anxiety, tension, and sleeplessness.¹⁹ The assistance of an AI-enabled CGM solution offers the ability to predict the likelihood of hypoglycemia throughout the night. Real-world data using this technology has shown a reduction in the likelihood of severe nocturnal hypoglycemia by over 30%.^22,23

Effective glycemic control achieved through leveraging AI’s ability to generate personalized glucose predictions is not only a significant leap empowering patients to manage diabetes, it is also a diagnostic innovation that supports the entire healthcare ecosystem. The societal cost of diabetes-related complications and hospital admissions are enormous.²⁴ The International Diabetes Federation has estimated that the total diabetes-related health expenditure will reach US $1.03 trillion by 2030 and US $1.05 trillion by 2045.²⁵ The precision afforded by AI-enabled CGM therefore has great potential to translate into concrete, long-term economic benefits for health systems and the global economy.

5. Automated and standardized mass spectrometry

Speaking of diagnostic precision, there is very little that rivals the capabilities of liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), which offers superior analytical specificity and sensitivity compared to traditional methods like immunoassays.²⁶ Unfortunately, the broader clinical application of this method has been hindered by its confinement to specialized environments, siloed laboratory spaces, and the need for dedicated personnel able to navigate a patchwork of instruments from various vendors.²⁷

Fully automated and standardized mass spectrometry, however, is changing all that. One key group of beneficiaries for this advancement are organ transplant patients. This is because patients undergoing an organ transplant rely on fast and highly precise therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of the immunosuppressant drugs (ISDs) that prevent organ rejection.²⁷ Since ISDs have a narrow therapeutic window, improper dosing can lead to therapeutic failure (rejection) or drug-induced toxicity.^28-30 LC-MS/MS provides the high-level sensitivity and specificity required for prompt, life-saving drug dose adjustments.^31-33 As the gold standard for the TDM of ISDs, the broad adoption of fully automated and standardized LC-MS/MS means that organ transplant patients can expect more consistent results, even across multiple care centers.^34-36 Consistency means patients are not receiving mixed messages about their care, reducing anxiety and strengthening trust in the healthcare system.²⁷

At the convergence of these five diagnostic innovations, a new definition for patient care emerges. Less invasive, more accessible, and more precise diagnostics are much more than a simple upgrade—they are the foundation for the personalized, prevention-centered, cutting-edge healthcare of the future.

The benefits for patients are obvious: reduced stress and fear, enhanced comfort, greater convenience, and genuine empowerment. The advantages for healthcare providers and systems are equally inspiring: enhanced efficiency, economic viability (via decentralization and complication prevention), and consistently better clinical results.

Healthcare leaders that invest in these patient-centric diagnostic breakthroughs will not only improve the quality of care for their patients, but also pioneer the sustainable and efficient global healthcare system we urgently need.