Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Roche Diagnostics Investor Day 2021. My name is Henrik. I'm the technical operator for today's call. Kindly note that the webinar is being recorded. I would like to inform you that all participants are in listen-only mode during the call. Today's webinar is divided into two blocks of presentation. Each of these blocks will be a Q&A session in the afterward. You are invited to send in questions for this throughout the entire session using the Q&A functionality of Zoom. You may also raise your virtual hand to address your questions verbally. For participants joining via phone, to raise your hand, use star 9 on your phone's dial pad. When you then get selected to ask your question, please follow the instructions from the phone and press star six to unmute yourself.
At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce you to Karl Mahler, Head of Investor Relations and Group Planning. Karl, the stage is yours.
Yeah, thanks a lot, Henrik. Welcome to our first in that format, virtual Diagnostic Day. We have reserved 2 hours for you, 1 hour for presentation, 1 hour for Q&A. I think you already had a first impression on this new format, this 360-degree format, and this will be available for your benefit for another 3 months on our website, so you can walk through and go down the more to come today. Today, you will get an excellent overview of the world's leading IVD company. IVD is everything which is analyzed outside of the body, and I have to say I have actually 2 hopes for today. The first one is that we all, including myself, increase the knowledge base in the diagnostic business.
Diagnostic is always first, and medication is following that. The second is, my hope is that with this increased understanding, we see also, and this is my IR head here, a bit more in the valuation approach, because if I look at the sales multiples for other companies, and I look, what our beautiful business gets for that in our multiples, I actually, I don't see everything fairly reflected, but this may be the destiny of every investor relations person. If you could kindly go to the agenda. This is the agenda for the day. We will start off with the basics. Thomas Schinecker, the CEO, will walk us through the strategy, organization, Diagnostic Solutions and research represented by Ann and Palani. We will have Q&A.
This will be led by Birgit. Any complaints, if you cannot raise your questions and so on, please direct it to her. We have a half an hour Q&A. We have two blocks of it, Birgit will guide us through. We have in the later part the business areas, systems, infectious diseases, cardiology and oncology, led by Benjamin, Michael, Andre, and Jill. There will be a final Q&A and some closing remarks from Thomas. I have maybe next slide, please, a few remarks from my side. Overall, the market, the IVD market was growing mid-single digit. Roche was always growing either in line or slightly ahead of the market. There was a large consolidation ongoing in that market.
I mean, if you look at some prominent names like the J&J and the Bayer of the past, they either disappeared or they will, well, going into other businesses, resolved into other businesses. If you look at the top five in 1998 or in 2000, it's always 50%. If you look at 2018, 2019, it's again, 50%. I have to stress here that Roche was growing here organically. It's the only company here what you see in the top region which grew organically. The dive business has high barriers of entry, so the capital requirements is high. It's higher than in pharma. This is maybe also due to the razor blade model. It is a more, a lower risk business.
I mean, maybe Thomas will disagree with this, my statement, but if you compare the risk involvement in diagnostics as compared to pharma clearly has a higher risk attitude or attack. I would say maybe the failures of pharma, we have zero one decision I will make some weeks now is delay in the diagnosis. Last but not least, diagnostic is also helping us at the moment to get back to a new mobility in these very difficult times. It will provide, and does already provide a major contribution to get society out of this pandemic mode at the moment. Instrumental problem with this one, I wanted to hand over to Thomas, please.
Thank you very much, Karl, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. Yeah, welcome also from my side for today's Investor Day event. Happy to take you through the first part of the presentation about the strategy and the organization. On the next slide, you'll see that Roche is the clear market leader in the IVD market, leading in most of the segments with 23.4 billion tests performed. That's more than three tests per inhabitant of this world. Diagnostics plays a huge role in the world to make sure that healthcare is effective.
On the right-hand side, you see an example for one of these installations that are highly automated and high throughput, where you can analyze many different blood samples with many different tests at the same time without any manual labor. Going to the next slide, you'll see that over the last one year, we actually went through a global transformation exercise. We looked at our strategy and how we want to be set up best for the future. For that, we looked at seven different strategic segments.
Of course, customers, because at the end, if only if our customers are happy, we will actually be successful. We also looked at other things. What are the portfolio segments we want to play in? Also, how do we want to fuel our innovation engine, et cetera? We haven't done this innovation exercise or strategy exercise in isolation. We've actually done it with a lot of different employees, with customers, with experts around the world, to make sure that we get a broad input. On the next slide, you see that overall, the healthcare system has a number of objectives that they want to fulfill. It's clear that there is strong need for healthcare and that also the related spending is continuously increasing.
In order for the healthcare system to fund innovation, they, at the same time, need to understand on how they can reduce costs, and only by doing that, they can make sure that the healthcare system is sustainable and affordable. The system clearly has in focus to rewards for value for the patient and making sure that you, that we as a company, can improve outcomes and reduce cost of care, because this is what the system needs to do. I think diagnostics has a huge opportunity here because with the different biomarkers we have, we can actually improve outcomes. We have a number of examples in cardiology, and oncology, and you will hear some later today.
Also by targeting treatments much better, by reducing the amount of hospital stay days, we can also tackle the reduced cost. Really, diagnostics is a key lever for the healthcare system to actually achieve the objective that they have. On the next slide. I mean, to be able to address those needs of the healthcare system, it's clear for us that we need to understand the patient journey in the healthcare system. If a patient is in a stage where they are healthy and they're screened, but later maybe in a diagnosis or in a treatment in a monitoring setting, what are the different points in the healthcare system that are not effective? And where are the gaps in the healthcare system?
If we address those gaps, we can either benefit the outcomes, for patients, or we can, also benefit the system with reduced cost of care. If you think about it also a bit more in the, in the mid to long term, we also believe that today you have very independent interactions with the healthcare system. If we can really, guide patients more in a patient-centric way, longitudinally through the different stages of their disease, we can, further improve outcomes and reduce cost of care. Because today, each intersection is like a one-time e-event, and it's completely forgotten until the next time that you go to the doctor. We believe that there's a huge opportunity here. Going to the next slide.
We want to address the needs from the healthcare system to improve outcomes and reduce costs of care, really pulling on three levers. The first one is to deliver medical value and integrated testing solutions. Today, we have the most automated solutions in the markets, from our cobas 6800, cobas 8800 in molecular, but also in our core lab, we have highly automated solutions that really help also reducing the cost in the system, making also the quality of care higher because there are less mistakes that happen through manual interventions. What we also have is we have the broadest menu of tests on these solutions. Our customers need that. They don't want to interact with too many different instruments, with too many interfaces.
They want to make sure that they actually deliver all of the medical value content that they need on as few systems as possible. Today, we have more than 500 markers across our portfolio, and we are constantly increasing this every year. We really want to push the boundaries here because there's still so much unmet medical needs. Specifically, when we look at these patient journeys, we have clearly identified areas where we can improve outcomes and reduce cost of care. Now, given that there is so much content that we can deliver on our systems, and given that the healthcare system and the information about diseases and also the diagnostics capabilities really increase exponentially, it's almost impossible for doctors to always be able to make the right decisions because just there's so much data.
We believe through artificial intelligence, through healthcare decision support solutions, we can actually enable better and more confident healthcare decisions. The decision is still being made by the doctor, but through digital solutions, we can help guide those more like a navigational system. Now, really to take them to the third step, to really improve care along patient journeys, really building more the healthcare system around the patient rather than everything being built around the healthcare system. This is really where the healthcare systems aim to go in the future with value-based healthcare, et cetera. For that, we can bring together a couple of different modalities. We can bring together our diagnostics capabilities, our digital capabilities, but also working with pharma, we can bring together diagnostics, therapy and clinical decision support.
This is what we are doing in the, in the third axis, and you will see some examples there as well. With those priorities, we also address our 10-year ambitions from our group as well. Now going to the next slide. As a consequence of our strategy, we also looked at how we set ourselves up for the future, for two reasons. One is for the customer, so that it's easier to do business with us, so they don't have to interface with too many different business areas, but really get more holistic solutions. Solutions that touch different modalities of technologies and disease areas that otherwise would be too fragmented. We can really think about that more holistically.
But also in terms of, you know, when we looked at ourselves internally, we can reduce complexity by not having duplications for different functions across too many different business areas. What we've done is we've combined 3 business areas into 1, which is called the Roche Diagnostic Solutions, and we've actually combined four different organizations that were dealing with digital products to one solution. Also being able to serve from one hand with a common look and feel. Going to the next slide, please. This will also mean that from a reporting perspective, we will, you know, also change a little bit from the reporting side.
First on the, on the top side, what we have included now is the four different customer area heads, area, customer areas, core lab, molecular lab, point of care, and pathology, and diabetes care, which is a standalone business unit, as we had communicated a couple of years in the past. With those, we really focus on those customer segments. At the same time, in the past, we had Japan reported separately. Already for a couple of years, Japan is actually part of Asia Pacific. In terms of reporting, we said then it only makes sense to also include that in Asia Pacific. Going to the next slide, please. It was clear that if we want to further invest into research and development, we also need to take it from somewhere.
By simplifying our organization, we can free up resources due to these increased efficiencies. We reinvest that into the strategic focus areas. We are already investing more than anyone else in research and development. Really, if we want to fund more of the incredible opportunities that we have around medical value solutions, which includes new biomarkers, digital solutions and insight generation, clinic decision support, but also disease management capabilities and access capabilities, we also wanted to make sure that we take the money from areas where it doesn't create value for patients and for the system, to really put that in that direction, where it does actually create the value, and we can then benefit as a return of that from that value that we generate. Going to the next slide, please.
Let me just take you through the three different levels of our strategy. First, the one around delivering medical value and integrated testing solutions. As mentioned, we have four customer areas that we serve here, core labs, molecular labs, pathology, and point of care. We have different products that we offer, systems, assays, digital and IT solutions, but also services. There are four areas on how we strongly differentiate, also versus our competition. The first one is around medical value. We have, by far, the biggest and broadest menu of tests, but not only that, we have the most differentiated menu. We have really highly innovative markers, and we have a full pipeline of additional markers to come that we are really excited about.
I believe this is differentiating us from many of the other players who have maybe not as much expertise on the medical side as we have, given our combination also with pharma and the focus that we've had over many years. The second part is around efficiency. These labs, and you have seen a picture in the beginning, need to be highly efficient because the majority of the cost in a lab is personnel. If they can, you know, do more of the testing at the same amount of people or even less people, this is what the labs are really looking forward to. We have really a new generation of different platforms that really, truly enables that. So we are also extremely well positioned here.
Another great example, I think, is on the molecular side, where we have the most automated solutions in the market. The third piece is around digitalization. Here we've done an acquisition, for example, also around Viewics, where it helps labs really optimize the lab in a very good way, also helps labs work with the clinicians to make sure that clinicians order the right tests. This is something that we have seen in the past when we've done installations of Viewics, that actually people presenting the same symptoms don't always get the same amount of testing and not always according to the guidelines. With that, we can really influence the clinical decision-making through digitalization.
The fourth piece is around access, where we've done a lot around preeclampsia, HPV, which Ann will talk about as well. Going to the next, here, this part is around the enabling of confident healthcare decisions. Next slide, please. Here we have solutions for labs, we have solutions for providers and for patients. Products that we have in here are platforms, applications, also marketplace. We can guide lab and clinic workflows, support clinical decisions, and also disease management. What's critical here is to have a good running platform that helps build different applications on top of that. This platform will need to enable an efficient operation in the different hospitals. You can imagine, you know, when sometimes maybe the wrong kind of testing is done, guiding the right testing through clinical decision support solutions will make it more efficient.
There will be less stays in hospital. There will be more correct procedures and also better treatments. Then, really guiding through clinical decision support solutions, we can also improve the outcomes of patients. Again, this is an area where we can improve outcomes and reduce cost of care. Using that data, we can then also support hospitals, but also providers to generate insights, to really understand, okay, how can we better treat chronic diseases in the future so that we can reduce the amount of hospital stays? Going to the next slide, please. This is the part about improving care along patient journeys.
Today, it's really about understanding from a patient perspective, where is the gap in the healthcare system, and how can we improve the care for the patient and the outcomes for the patient by filling that gap in the patient journey? Really looking at it from a patient perspective. Also in the future, as value-based care will be more prominent, hospitals, but also healthcare systems, will look more at companies to help them really provide solutions, combine solutions between digital medicines and diagnostics to improve, for example, the care of chronic patients, to really bring down the cost of the healthcare system. The healthcare systems need to partner with companies such as ours, to really do that effectively. We'll have some examples for atrial fibrillation and also diabetes care. Next slide.
Yeah, so at the end, this is, you know, the three areas that we're really focused on. Clearly, this we can only do with the best talent in the industry. We will shift money to invest into our strategic priorities, to even spend more in research and development, but taking it from areas that don't create value. With that, we want to continue to grow our market share. Next slide, please. With that, I thank you for now, I hand over to Ann.
Thanks a lot, Thomas. Hello, everybody, a warm welcome from my side. My name is Ann Costello, I head up the newly formed Roche Diagnostic Solutions business area. I'm very excited to give you an overview of our strategic priorities and share some examples of how we're actually driving medical innovation on our integrated systems. With that, let's move to the next slide, we can have a look at our overall structure. As you heard, Diagnostic Solutions is a key contributor and will remain a key contributor of our revenues over the next 10 years. It's important we continue to drive the business forward. To do that, we want to do that really by understanding sort of the demands that are put on the labs to do more testing with less.
Really, we believe customer centricity or intimacy is the key to success here. From our side, we have decided to evolve our structure from a focus on technology, to a focus on customers and ultimately, as Thomas said, on patient outcomes. Now, we are organized into four different customer segments. Core lab. Core lab is really the workhorse of diagnostic testing. It's covering immunology, clinical chemistry, hematology, and so on. The molecular lab, of course, you know, the big areas like virology, microbiology, and more and more clinical genomics. The pathology lab covering the histology and cytology testing, and then point of care, which really spans everything from the satellite lab to patient self-testing.
With the healthcare budgets coming under pressure, you know, our customers are looking to companies like us to help really solve their pain points. They don't want just another supplier of instruments and assays. They're looking for much more. They expect comprehensive solutions and really a unique experience that's personalized for them. When we talk about a comprehensive solution, we're talking about solutions that cover everything, all the nuts and bolts, full automation, digital tools like clinical decision support tools, IT connectivity, and value-added services such as consulting or remote servicing. You know, these are really important components, but what's really important from our side is that the solution works seamlessly. Everything is integrated together, and that we can provide that customized solutions to meet our customer needs and to provide them with meaningful value.
If we go to the next slide, we can have a look at some of these solutions. We strongly believe that differentiation comes from developing better and more innovative products and solutions much faster than competitors. We've defined four pillars of differentiation here: medical value, diagnostic efficiency, digitization, and market access. Let me talk you through some examples here. If we look at the area of medical value, we're really focused on those top disease areas with, you know, the biggest burden, cardiometabolic disease, oncology, infectious diseases, and of course, up-and-coming CNS. As you can see here, we have 9 breakthrough devices under our belt, and that shows really that the FDA recognizes the potential benefit of these assays, and Palani will talk more in detail about those individual assays.
In the area of lab automation, and as you know, this is an area where we have been at the forefront for many, many years, and we continue to innovate in this space. Just to give you an example, we recently launched the cobas prime, a fully automated Pre-analytical System that streamlines the workflow molecular labs. This is really the first of its kind. We're bringing a complete end-to-end solution for molecular testing here. Jumping on to the digital side of the house here. You know, digital technology has basically transformed our lives and the way we work, and it's quite frankly, no different in the lab, where digital solutions can really help drive quality and speed and allowing better interpretation of testing results. Let me give you a couple of examples here.
One is in the area of digital pathology. For example, here we have the uPath workflow software, which allows pathologists to move seamlessly between multiple slides in a single view, something that you can't do with a normal microscope. Another area is what we call the v-TAC. This is in the area of blood gas analyzers. We recently launched a digital algorithm that calculates arterial blood gas values from venous blood, which, of course, is much more convenient and much less painful and invasive for the patient. Looking at the fourth pillar is market access. I mean, what's clear is, you know, one side of the coin is innovation. We need to make sure that innovation is reimbursed and is getting to the patients that need it.
Here, I think we can be very proud of some of the great progress that we have made in getting adoption of new technologies and biomarkers. An example of this, of course, is cervical cancer, where we have generated both clinical as well as health economic evidence to really drive the uptake of HPV in primary screening. Another great example is preeclampsia. Preeclampsia is a pregnancy complication, and it's characterized by high blood pressure, and it can occur in about, you know, 1 in 20 pregnancies. If it's left untreated, it leads to very serious complications for the mother and baby, and it is already associated with significant healthcare cost.
With our test, we're able to reduce those unnecessary hospitalization of the mothers, by having a look at, you know, are the mothers at risk of developing preeclampsia, and of course, identifying those actually who are high risk and that need to have the appropriate care. Now, speaking of that innovation, I wanna talk about our SARS-CoV-2 portfolio, and if we move to the next slide, we can talk again about, you know, all of the areas that we were quickly able to innovate in SARS-CoV-2 and our contribution to the pandemic. Now, it's almost 1 year to the day, right, that we brought the very first PCR assay out to the market in absolutely record time.
Since then, we've continued to, you know, rapidly develop a portfolio of solutions that help to detect and diagnose the infection, as well as providing digital support for healthcare systems. The depth and breadth of our technology was a huge asset, allowing us to really develop different assays very quickly to address the clinical questions that were coming up, as well as providing solutions for the different settings, from the clinical labs and all the way to the point of care setting. Just last week, actually, we were very proud, we were able to bring the first PCR variant test to the market. Again, really responding to those customer needs. You know, developing tests is just one part of that story.
Once you've developed the test, you need to be able to manufacture and deliver at scale, and that's what you're going to see on the next slide, that we've made some very significant investments here. You know, as the demand for COVID testing, you know, just came sort of unprecedented, we needed to ramp up, and we needed to respond very quickly to meet that demand. We invested heavily and across the entire portfolio and the value chain. Everything from raw materials, manufacturing lines, for reagents, consumables, as well as investments in the instrumentation side. All in all, we have invested about CHF 600 million and put on about, you know, 1,200 people to be able to do this ramp up so fast.
I think this, you know, really speaks to the idea of the capabilities of Roche Diagnostics and our ability to quickly respond by bringing together that expertise as well as the innovation that's needed to really maximize that capacity and bring the tests that are needed. If we go to the next slide, please. During the days of the pandemic, I think we're all aware of, you know, how governments and healthcare providers found themselves on the back foot when it came to testing infrastructure. They simply didn't have the testing capacity, the instruments in place to be able to respond quickly, and that's what they had to do. They had to really step up that capacity, and certainly, you know, we were a strong partner for them to do that. It speaks to the strong position we had.
We were able to respond very quickly, and as you can see on this slide here, We saw an increase of about 42% in our install base of the 6800, 8800 full automated instruments compared to the end of 2019. We actually see this continuing as hospitals and labs continue to invest in molecular systems. You know, we're aiming at an install base of 1,600-1,700 instruments by the end of 2021, which means we would have doubled our install base. If you could just move to the next slide, please. You know, the ongoing pandemic has really underpinned the central role that diagnostic plays.
I think, you know, something that has always sort of been in the background has come to the forefront, as you heard from Thomas. All good, you know, diagnoses are done by diagnostic testing, and it's really important that labs continue to be able to generate that, and that's where we're looking to the future. We're expecting more consolidation of labs, and we're expecting a shift to full automation, which is really in our wheelhouse, because that's the important part, is to be able to increase the efficiency as well. We're seeing that in a number of areas. You probably have seen from the media as well, the U.K. are creating these two mega labs with, you know, testing capacity of greater than 600 tests per day.
That's, you know, to add diagnostic capacity, not only for COVID, but of course, beyond COVID, for critical diseases, including cancer. I think, you know, with our growing install base, we find ourselves in a really strong position to be able to leverage our portfolio of assays and future pipeline. If you go to the next slide, please. Let me just say a final word on GenMark. As you have seen, last week, we signed a definitive merger agreement with GenMark Diagnostics to get access to their novel technology and broad range of pathogens that they can test for with a single patient sample.
You know, the GenMark syndromic panel testing will absolutely broaden and complement our current molecular diagnostics portfolio, and we're very excited about that prospect. We also believe that our, you know, our commercial network, which is, you know, very broad and global, will certainly open up new opportunities in new markets. With that, let me hand over to Palani to talk us through our R&D activities.
Many thanks, Ann. A warm welcome from my side as well. Hope you're doing well and staying safe. My name is Palani Kumaresan. I'm the Global Head of Research and Development for Roche Diagnostic Solutions. In the next few slides, I would like to walk you through our approach to medical value innovation. Before I do that, first, I would like to show you a number around what Thomas mentioned, which is our investment in R&D. As you can clearly see from this chart, we are clearly out-investing our nearest competitors when it comes to R&D, because we truly believe that this is what will really usher us into the future with the innovative solutions that Thomas also highlighted across both medical value, but also the insights business.
The additional point that I would like to make is in the next slide, you'll see, by bringing R&D for the first time under one umbrella for Roche Diagnostic Solutions, we can also drive some important efficiencies. We are looking at increasing organizational effectiveness as well as improving project delivery. What do I mean by these? By bringing R&D under one umbrella, we can clearly look at areas where we can improve standardization and also cross-pollination of best practices across our organization. We are also very carefully looking to shift funds to those medical value projects and those digital projects versus non-project activities. When it comes to improving project delivery, we are also looking very holistically at prioritization and going through a very rigorous portfolio prioritization process.
We clearly are looking very closely at that unprecedented rate at which we were able to develop solutions for COVID-19 that Ann showed to you. We are looking at what are the elements of that we can truly internalize and take it to other parts of our portfolio and development work. With that said, in the next slide, you'll see our strategy around medical value innovation. Quite simply put, there are two elements to this. Looking at a broad menu of our tests and biomarkers that can run on our broad install base that Thomas and Ann highlighted, and especially in the molecular space, with the doubling of our installed base, we clearly see having that broad menu will allow for that consolidation on our platforms at our customer sites.
On top of that, the differentiation, the important part, is around the medical value solutions. Here we are focusing on those high disease burden areas: cardiometabolic diseases, infectious diseases, oncology, and central nervous system. In the next slide, I'll show you the approach that we take for these high medical value solutions. If you follow me, in the top, you see those disease areas that I mentioned, and this is illustrative. Now, if you take, for example, cardiometabolic diseases, we take a step in and see, okay, what are the key indications with high disease burden within cardiometabolic diseases? I show you here a subset: atrial fibrillation, coronary artery disease, chronic heart failure, acute coronary syndrome, some of these indications. In each of these indications as Thomas also highlighted, we look at that patient journey.
We look at the patient management in different healthcare systems, all the way from screening, diagnosis, risk stratification, and therapy selection, slash monitoring. Having that broad offering, the breadth and the depth in our portfolio, which is quite unique to Roche, we can then come in and say, "Where are the key unmet needs? Where can we improve the outcomes or reduce costs?" We go into our toolbox of our broad menu and say, "Okay, what do we want to then bring to the market to appropriately address that?" It could be biomarkers, it could be digital solutions, it could be other kinds of innovation. To make it more concrete, in the next slide, I show you an example of the kind of solutions we have in the market and what we are looking at.
Just to orient you to this slide, on the left-hand side, you see the disease areas. Next to them, you see some of the indications. This is, again, not comprehensive, but some key examples. The coloring for the indications, as you can see, we are picking from different parts of our toolbox. There are solutions coming from core lab, molecular lab, pathology lab, and point of care, and that's how the coloring shows on the indication. You see from the dots, our on-market solutions in development and under evaluation across that continuum of care. In the second half of our presentation, our experts in infectious diseases, oncology, cardiometabolic, they will give you some examples, walk you in a little bit more detail of some of these innovative solutions that we are working on. Now, this is our view.
I wanted to show you also the recognition that we have received from the FDA in the U.S. in terms of breakthrough device designations, and briefly highlight the number of breakthrough device designations we have had in the recent years. Here you can see across the key disease areas, the different breakthrough device designations we have had since 2018. I won't go through all of them, for example, to just highlight, say, in infectious diseases, in 2018, we received a breakthrough device designation from the FDA for our Epstein-Barr virus, quantitative test, as well as the BK virus. Now, these are quite omnipresent, but they can and they're generally quite fine for healthy individuals that in the latent phase or in the dormant phase. If for transplant patients, these can be an extremely important risk factor.
Here, the testing of these patients for these tests is very critical. Based on that Breakthrough Device designation, we were able to speed up our launch of these tests. Last year in Q3, we came out, and we launched these tests in the U.S., as well as in the rest of the world. If you have questions around any of the others, I'll be happy to answer during the Q&A session. I wanted to close out my section by showing you what is our delivery agenda for 2021. As you can see, it's quite a busy slide, and we like to keep it that way, this slide. You can see our delivery agenda across instruments, tests, and digital solutions, and across the different customer areas.
Some of these will get highlighted in the second half of our presentation. I would spare you the details here, but as you can see, it's a, it's a very busy agenda and we are tracking to this as the year is progressing. Thank you very much, and I will hand it back to Birgit to open up the Q&A session.
Hello, everybody, and a very, very warm welcome from my side as well. My name is Birgit Masjost. I'm the investor relations officer for our diagnostics division, and I will run you through the Q&A. I would like to make you aware that you can raise your questions by either submitting through the Q&A function in Zoom or just by raising your hand. The first question I will take is from Jack Meehan, from Nephron Research, and he has two questions. First one, I think is for Thomas: How are you feeling about supply, demand dynamics in the PCR and antigen markets for COVID-19? The second question is for Ann: What indicators do you have around how the additional cobas 6800, 8800 systems you placed during the pandemic could be used longer term?
Yeah, thank you very much, Birgit, for the question. Let me first answer the question around PCR. Looking at current demands on PCR testing, I still believe that the demand is still higher than what at least we can supply at this point in time, despite the fact that, you know, we are increasing our capacities. Compared to like 3 months ago, where a few months ago, I would have said, "Well, the entire market has that situation," now, I would not necessarily say that anymore. The reason why I'm saying that is specifically in the U.S., you do see a drop in terms of the amount of PCR that's being done, or in general, the amount of testing that's being done.
I believe that is public information. In Europe, you don't see that. I think we benefit from a couple of things here. First, we don't have such a strong U.S. exposure. We are not exactly the first company to feel that. Second, what we have seen is actually that people hold on to our platforms because our platforms are the most automated, and they would rather, if they go down in testing, they would rather not do some of the more manual systems. Since our system automated, we are in a very good situation.
From our perspective, we still see the demand higher than supply, but this may be a Roche view right now, given that there are some dynamics that are changing, specifically in the markets with high vaccination rates. Regarding antigen testing, here, I would say that, you know, there have been some news from some companies that they've also seen a drop in demand, specifically in the U.S. When we look at the different regions around the world, specifically Europe, which is a big market, at the moment, I would say definitely there is a lot more supply still than there is demand, but this could change as some of the countries want to open up their economies, and they want to do much more frequent testing. Example, I think, is Germany.
Another example is Switzerland or the U.K. We'll see how that develops. On the other hand, if you look in this market, there are probably more than 100 companies right now, and, you know, a lot of Chinese companies, for example, on this market. You know, there is a lot of supply on the market. In the U.S., it's a little bit different because there are only very few companies right now that have been approved by the FDA, but there are hundreds that have applied for this approval.
I think this will, you know, on the one hand, change with the amount of vaccination, but also, you know, if there are more of these companies, getting the FDA approval, then there will be also more, you know, demand dynamics there. That's my view on this part for now.
Ann, your turn.
Yes. Thank you, Birgit. Yeah, so actually, on the, you know, the idea about the additional capacity in the market, I think the first remark that I would make is that COVID will be with us for quite some time. It will go from a pandemic to endemic. There will be still demand in the marketplace, not as it is today, but I think we'll see it settling into something like the flu business or even a little bit bigger. I think the other important point, though, for us, is that we expect to see consolidation in the market. By that is a big advantage for us because of the strong position we have in automation.
Our systems of the 6800, 8800 and the upcoming 5800, they bring more automation than other systems. There are very few companies that are able to meet those demands for efficiency and consolidation that our customers are looking for. I think the other thing, and Palani alluded to this, is that, you know, we have a huge focus on medical value and building out our pipeline, and we are active in all of the disease areas. There is still a lot of areas where we can bring new biomarkers that will add value here in the area of sexually transmitted diseases, in the area of virology, in the area of respiratory disease as well. I think that is an advantage for us.
I think the other remark that I would make, though, is about, you know, the pricing situation. You know, we made a very conscious decision at the beginning of the pandemic to really look at pricing in a way that it was fair and that it was compatible with the current portfolio that we have. I think, you know, as if price erosion will come in, other companies will be hit before we are because they have priced much higher. This, you know, sort of global pricing that we took on is something that will protect us, so we're not going to feel as much impact as some of our other competitors might feel. I think, you know, we're very well positioned going forward once the pandemic starts to recede.
Thanks, Ann. The next question I will take from Richard Vosser, JP Morgan. Richard, I give you permission to talk now, so please ask your question.
Thanks, Birgit. I hope you can hear me. Couple of follow-up questions here. Just, you mentioned, Ann, the size of the flu business. Could you quantify the size of the flu business for your for Diagnostics every year to give us some sort of framework of what the future could look like? Just on the change in terms of the installed base, in terms of the growth, is that in concrete orders, or can governments still change their minds? Is that still more direct investment rather than the more traditional, I suppose, paying over time, model? Finally, Thomas, you spoke about conversations with governments to increase testing of other diseases. Maybe just how are those conversations going?
What should we think about the increased demand to fill up post-COVID?
Okay, great. I think the first question is one for Thomas, the second one maybe for Ann, and then the third one, maybe you can answer them together, Thomas, because I think it's pretty again-
Yeah. Maybe, let me just take those questions. You know, if you look at the flu business, I think it's a good number to guide ourselves in terms of what the markets could look like from one aspect, because it's a respiratory disease. However, the reason why I believe it's a bit bigger than the flu testing businesses, because the majority of that market was actually in the U.S. in the past. If you look in Europe, you know, people really didn't take the flu as seriously, I would say. You can also see that with Tamiflu sales.
In the past, we had a lot of Tamiflu sales in the U.S., but actually in Europe, you know, not so much, but there was also not so much testing. Yet a lot of people die every year of influenza as well. We believe that actually, that business will likely look a bit bigger than that, because the rest of the world will test much more also for flu, because they're taking this much more seriously. It's in the CHF low, single digit billions, you know, in terms of global markets. I would say, you know, once we get through this, and the question is when, right?
I wouldn't declare victory yet on this pandemic, because there are a lot of variants around, et cetera, then it could recede into that kind of more of a midterm, long-term size. You had a question about, you know, can the governments give systems back? I would say most of the time, the governments were not the ones buying the instruments. It was actually customers under contract. As you mentioned, the majority of these instruments were sold, and they were not done in a relation to rental contract because exactly for the reason that we didn't know, I mean, how long is this pandemic going to last? For sure, we didn't want to be the ones then sitting on a lot of instruments.
You know, we want customers to actually put them to use and really help diagnose more patients for other diseases. This is where we come to the third point, where I would say one of the governments that actually is really looking at this very seriously right now, is actually the U.K. government, where we are in close exchange, versus, you know, most of the other governments are still trying to figure out how to deal best with this pandemic, and they're not so really focused on other diseases yet. It's clearly, you know, there's a huge opportunity if we can shift diagnosis to much earlier into the disease. You know, there are many diseases where either the survival rate is much higher or people literally can survive and don't have to die at all, right?
I think cervical cancer is a great example. Lung cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, you know, these are all great examples where you can actually use screening specifically for viruses, but also, you know, liquid biopsy to detect diseases much earlier. With that, you can not only improve outcomes, but you can actually significantly reduce cost of care, because most of the time it's really those patients, when they're detected so late, that there's a huge cost to the system.
Okay.
Thanks.
Thanks, Thomas. The next question I will take from Michael Leuchten, UBS.
Sorry, can you hear me?
Yes.
Hi, thank you. Two questions, please. One is, just going back to your answer just now, Thomas. Is it the government that will drive programs to incremental testing for other diseases, or do you need to get to decision makers like physicians that really have to change the behavior? If you do, how do you to do life that increase installed base? My second question is about the sort of increase in capacity that the pandemic has driven into the market. Is there a risk that more testing is going to be done in-house and not hospitals and away from the centralized labs, and as a result of that, you have to slightly change your business model and your approach to where the volume is done? Thank you.
Thomas, do you want to take those? Yes.
Yeah, I can. I hope I did understand the first question. I think given the fact that we have a very broad menu on our systems and they're so automated, I think those are the two key decision criteria for hospitals and labs to decide which platforms they're gonna focus on, because simply, they need to reduce the amount of manual labor. I can tell you there are a lot of people that I've spoken to that are using more research-like platforms. They're saying, you know, you know, "As soon as you deliver more, we really need your help because people are burning out, you know, doing these, all these manual steps." I believe from that perspective, we are, I think, very well positioned.
You had another question around, you know, will it be more decentralized? I think there is a great opportunity because, you know, there are actually hospitals that didn't have PCR capacity. Now they do have PCR capacity, so they can run these tests. I believe these are tests that otherwise would not have been run, right? When you look at these big reference labs, I think those will also still exist significantly in the future because they're getting a lot of the samples also from the primary care segments. I think those are elements that will continue to exist, and there will be a place for point of care. Clearly, it will balance itself out a little bit more.
I mean, the fact is that antigen testing is not as accurate as PCR testing. One of the reasons for antigen testing that it played a role. Actually, there are two main reasons. One is there was not enough capacity, and with that, also turnaround times were too long. But also with this virus, because the viral load is so high, you can at least detect infectious people or people that, you know, have above a certain amount of viral load. By the way, sometimes I see some accuracy data of rapid antigen test of high nineties. That's just impossible, right? Simply from a biology perspective, you will never be able to get to that level with detecting proteins.
This will also change a little bit because if you look at flu, actually, rapid antigen testing is not a preferred method because the viral load is not so high, and then, you know, you actually have an issue detecting, you get a lot of false negatives. As people get vaccinated, rapid antigen testing will become less relevant simply because of the same reason. I've talked to a number of key opinion leaders, because if people that get infected, their viral load will not be as high as it was in the past with infections. You know, they will need to resort more to, I think, the PCR side. There may have been one more question that I didn't answer. Can you just repeat that?
Yeah. Just, sorry, the line might have been bad. The question was, you said how the U.K. government is.
a little bit more constructive on how to think about the screening for other diseases.
Yeah, yeah.
Is it the government that will drive it, or is it the decision maker?
Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I think, you know, it's really dependent on the healthcare system. You have healthcare systems like the U.K., which is very centralized, one-payer system, they have it a more, an easier time to drive those kinds of things. What we've seen in the past, for example, with cervical cancer or other diseases, actually, it gets into the guidelines quite quickly, but it's still not done. The reason why it's not done is because there's no reimbursement. I think where the governments need to play a big role in, you know, countries like Germany, Switzerland, or other countries, if they want to incentivize certain screening programs, they need to put reimbursements in place. As long as there's no reimbursement in place, people don't do it.
That's the role of the governments, to put the incentives in place.
Thank you very much.
Okay, thanks. The next question is from Keya Patni, Goldman Sachs.
Hi, thank you, Birgit, and thank you all for doing this. Really appreciate it. Two big-picture questions for you, Thomas, if I can. The first one is, from the last 10 years, Roche Diagnostics on an underlying basis, delivered about 6.5% kind of revenue growth. As you look at the various pushes and pulls, kind of over the next five years, what do you think is the best case, kind of, top-line growth we should be modeling? Clearly, there'll be a COVID impact in, kind of, second half 2021 or 2022. As you look at the installed base, as you look at new test dynamics that you were talking about, what should be our, kind of, best case for that growth?
Separately, as you think about delivering that growth, and in the context of, kind of the, drivers of that growth, how should we think about the potential for margin expansion, kind of, off the diagnostics business over the next 3 to 5 years? Thank you.
Thanks for that question. First, regarding the underlying growth, what I have mentioned in the full year reporting is that I believe we'll have strong underlying growth in 2021. I can confirm that. Overall, the base business is doing extremely well. If you then look at the COVID sales, you should see that a bit like Tamiflu in the past, right? It comes, it may go to a certain degree, maybe not completely, but if there are more waves in the future, there may be another wave in Q4 this year, we'll see how that plays out. There may be other waves coming in the future, maybe not only of this virus, but other viruses.
we should look at it with and without COVID effect. Without the COVID effect, we do believe that we'll outpace the markets continuously over the next 5 to 10 years. Growing aheads and in line with what you have said, approximately in terms of sales growth that you have mentioned on your side. With that, our aim is to continuously improve our margins. We had a huge jump in terms of margin improvement last year, with 50% growth on the operating profit. It's clear that some of that is COVID-related, but also, you know, looking at what we have modeled, we're going to come out of this much stronger in terms of margin than how we went into it, into this COVID crisis.
From then on, we will continue to build and improve our margins.
Thank you very much, Thomas. The next question I have is from Jo Walton, Credit Suisse.
Can you hear me?
Yes, we can, Jo. Go ahead.
Oh, thank you. Thank you. I have a couple of questions.
The first one is, relating to, you know, point of care. You've already explained, why you think some of that will move back.
Towards more centralized testing. I wonder if you feel that there are any technology advances which will allow, you know, sufficiently accurate for at least first blush diagnostics to move more of diagnostics away from the centralized reference system to the point-of-care? I've got used to going and having a COVID test and getting my answer within 30 minutes. That's way better than having to wait 2 or 3 days for it to go through a reference lab. I wonder where, you know, what proportion of the market you think point-of-care might be going forwards? My second question would be, you know, going back to the really big installed bases that you have. You have emphasized that breadth of menu and level of automation are two key aspects.
If I was sitting in a hospital somewhere, and I had a relatively limited amount of floor space to add another, you know, test, and I was already an installed base with Abbott or whatever, what would be your sales pitch to me? Would it be that you've got, you know, 10 tests that I would want to do routinely that you could only get on my machine? I just don't understand what is unique about your machine versus one of your competitors. Imagine I'm sitting in the U.S. as a, as a new customer.
Thomas, do you want to take that? Thomas, are you on mute?
Sorry about that. I was on mute. Your first question was around point of care and the role of point of care. The main reason why point of care is done is really a sense of urgency, right? If you need to have a decision immediately. With COVID, you know, clearly, if you wait 2 days until you know whether or not you're positive, it's important to know that immediately, because then you know I need to isolate the person or not, right? If the person sits at home and basically can't go anywhere because they're still waiting for the results, it's not effective. There is a sense of urgency. If you look at other diseases, I would say, you know, cardiac, there's a certain urgency, you know.
Do I have a heart attack? I need to know immediately, you know, sepsis, et cetera. There are certain diseases where it is absolutely critical that you have a result, immediately. In many of the examples that I've just mentioned, the accuracy is really critical. PCR in a point of care segment or really, high sensitive troponin levels in a point of care setting, those are key criticalities. And so you have to have technologies that are able to do that. What we call that in the past is lab-like performance. During COVID, this lab-like performance, because there was such a big need, maybe was not so big in the focus.
You know, we had to look at what's good enough to at least get some sort of, you know, kind of, yeah, filter in place so that people don't infect others. There are other diseases like sepsis or cardiac. I don't... You don't wanna have a false negative, I can tell you, because then you really have an issue, right? It really depends on the disease, and it depends on the, on why you need to have the quick answer. You know, and in the past years, there was actually, you know, really a bifurcation of the market. There was a shift for really urgent things in point of care, but low volume.
The high volume that's not urgent, was done more in the central lab, just simply because of cost reasons, because you could bring down the costs much more. I think overall, the trend will continue. I think that there could be certain technologies that could be interesting in a point-of-care setting, but cost will become more of an issue again than maybe it is today, right? I mean, right now, cost seems to be not a big issue, but that will change. You know, what I can also say, there are certain market differences. Certain markets have always been more prone to point-of-care than others, right?
That's on that end, with point of care, I think we'll see more of a normalization to what we've seen in the past, really focusing on those diseases and those indications that are really urgent. The second question, you said rightly, you know, we have a huge installed base. By the way, this is only our automated platforms. We have, with MagNA Pure and LightCycler, thousands of placements as well, and with cobas 4800, but these are only the high automated ones. With cobas 5800, we're actually introducing the same kind of automation for lower throughput labs. We have solutions for every size of the lab, and I think that's one of the key selling arguments.
If you said, "Yeah, place, space is critical," we actually have a solution that fits in your space. That's one. The second is the level of automation. I've spoken to a number of customers. What they can actually do is, in the evening before they go home, they put samples on the machine, and they can go home, and the next day when they come, the samples are done. You cannot do that with systems where you have constant manual intervention. The amount of man and woman labor that it needs is so much less that actually the total cost of care is so much less. The last point beyond the menu is, we are...
actually able to also connect our systems to pre-analytics, so that every step in the way, also before the sample ever hits the system, is completely automated. No one needs to touch it, no mistakes happen. This is the age of digitalization. With cobas prime, we actually have a solution that can handle all kinds of tube and sample types, which is the only one of its kind. This level of automation is unprecedented, and with that, a clear advantage for our customers who need to do it at reduced cost and at a high quality.
Thank you very much, Thomas. I think with this, we need to close the Q&A in order to stay within the timelines. I would like to make you aware that we will have a second Q&A, where you can ask your questions again, and we will have all the speakers from the first session in the second Q&A as well. Please stay with us. We have a really short break now of just two minutes in order to stay within the timelines, and we will be back here, you know, for the second part of the presentation session. Please enjoy the platform in the meantime, you know, walk around, take a look, and hope to see you here again in about two minutes. Thank you.
Hello, welcome back to the second part of the presentations for our diagnostics investor day. I have the pleasure now to introduce Benjamin Lilienfeld to you, our Lifecycle Leader for our systems, and he will be presenting live from our showroom in Rotkreuz. Benjamin, the stage is yours.
Thank you very much, Birgit. It's a great pleasure. Welcome, everyone. Please go to the next slide. In the year 2020, we further increased our large global installed base, especially in the area of molecular diagnostics, with our cobas 6800 and 8800 platforms, in order to support the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Next slide. We now look at an installed instrument base of over 1,200 systems, 400 of which have been placed last year alone. Together with a broad and growing reagent menu, this secures a constant revenue stream for the years to come. Next slide.
Also, in the area of serum work area, with our clinical chemistry and immunochemistry business, we continuously grew our installed base last year, and together with over 230 immunochemistry and clinical chemistry assays, many of which are unique, high medical value assays, we guarantee a revenue stream for the coming years, also in this important business. Next slide. The year 2021 is a particularly exciting year for us. Just last week, we launched cobas pure integrated solutions, our integrated clinical chemistry and immunochemistry analyzer, optimized for lower volume labs. Today, actually, we announced the launch of the new and extended configurations for cobas pro integrated solutions in markets accepting the CE mark. Later this year, we will then launch cobas 5800, which is a molecular solution, and it's actually the most compact, fully automated molecular diagnostic solutions for the lower volume labs.
Lower volume compared to the cobas 6800 and 8800 offering. If we look at the competitive instruments, most of them do actually not even reach the throughput level of the cobas 5800. I'm now thrilled to present to you, live from the showroom, our headquarter in Rotkreuz, Switzerland, these instruments. Let me start with cobas pure integrated solutions that you can see here, our integrated immunochemistry as well as clinical chemistry analyzer. Again, this has been just brought to the markets accepting the CE mark last week. You can see it occupies a very small footprint of 2 sq m or 21.5 sq ft only. In the middle, you can see the loading area with a dedicated port for so-called emergency samples.
cobas pure integrated solutions offers industry's broadest serum work area assay menu, with over 230 different assays, many more to come, and many of these assays, unique, high medical value. cobas pure is packed with innovations, all of these innovations helping to deliver excellent results, while at the same time, simplifying the work in the lab. We do this with significantly reduced system preparation and overall hands-on time for the user. Many things are completely automated in the background. For example, many of the maintenance procedures are running in the background by the instrument without the need for any operator intervention. This and other innovations are clearly setting us apart from competition. Over here, you can see cobas pro integrated solutions. cobas pro integrated solutions is basically the bigger brother or sister of cobas pure.
The version you can see here is optimized for labs with a medium throughput. As I mentioned, just today, we announced that we now offer new and additional configurations for cobas pro integrated solutions, basically doubling the number of test results it can deliver every hour by adding up to two additional of these analytical units. Together, cobas pure and cobas pro offer a seamless experience and the highest level of standardization. They use the same technologies, they have the same assay menu, and deliver consistent results and operation. This allows for flexible staff assignment and minimal training needs. cobas pure and cobas pro are therefore ideal candidates for so-called integrated health networks or big laboratory chains with main labs and smaller satellite labs. Both cobas pure and cobas pro can be remotely controlled using this tablet, which we call cobas mobile solution.
This greatly increases efficiency and convenience by giving the user access to a number of unique apps. Now, let's move over to the molecular lab. This is cobas 5800. cobas 5800 will be launched towards the end of this year in markets accepting the CE mark. It is the most compact, fully automated polymerase chain reaction, or short, PCR system, with continuous loading and improved workflow flexibility. As you can see, it is very compact and offers truly consolidated, flexible, and efficient testing without any trade-offs. It also allows for prioritization of specific samples or assays, which is important in an emergency setup. Overall, this offers a huge benefit for clinicians expecting to receive results fast and expecting to be able to choose from a broad variety of assays, giving answers to many of their questions.
Together with cobas 6800 that you can see over here, as well as the even higher throughput instrument, cobas 8800, which is not on display today, they form a so-called system family, just like cobas pure and cobas pro. They share an identical user experience, reagent concept, performance, and quality, allowing for standardization and full scalability, and they benefit from a broad and expanding menu of high medical value assays. Both molecular diagnostic as well as Serum Work Area labs are constantly looking to further increase their workflows by automating as many steps as possible. This includes also the so-called pre-analytical steps, which are done before the samples will be brought to this analysis. One of these instruments, I would like to introduce to you now. This is cobas prime.
cobas prime has been launched last year, and it is the first and only solution capable of automatically preparing both the variety and volume of samples received from molecular diagnostic testing. This fully automated system consolidates, integrates, and standardizes the pre-analytical process to streamline lab operations. It therefore allows lab technicians to focus on the more value-added tasks. Overall, the system families I introduced to you, both in the area of molecular diagnostics as well as clinical chemistry and immunochemistry, help labs to improve outcomes by addressing the needs of labs of all sizes, and thereby help to increase patient access to these important diagnostic technologies. For us, they help to greatly increase overall profitability because they help us to reduce standard manufacturing costs of our reagents, as well as service costs of our systems.
Last not least, these new generation of instruments are more sustainable, and they, for example, help to significantly reduce the plastic waste generated per test result. Let's look into the future a bit further, and please show the slides again. Also in the outer years, we will continue to bring new innovations to the market. Today, I would like to focus on two new solutions that will enable us to expand into new areas and thereby increasing patient access to new technologies. Firstly, let's focus on the left side. With the integration of mass spectrometry into cobas pro integrated solutions, the instrument I have shown you before, we will bring this great technology into the core lab and equip the lab with a fully automated mass spectrometry solution that will work as simple as clinical chemistry and immunochemistry today. Sample in, result out.
This is completely different to the way it is done today, where you need highly specialized and skilled labor, that use lab-developed tests in a very manual procedure. Automating all of these steps will greatly increase the access for patients to this exciting technology, that offers promising new high medical value biomarkers. It also helps Roche Diagnostics to tap into a great and growing market of CHF 2.1 billion. On the right side, I would like to draw your attention on a compact and easy-to-operate benchtop analyzer we are designing right now. It is designed for the specific needs of emerging markets and combines immunochemistry and clinical chemistry into one single box, thereby greatly increasing the access for patients to diagnostics. It also allows us to tap into a CHF 2 billion accessible, highly growth market, further fueling our revenue streams for the future.
With this, I would like to thank you very much for your attention and hand over to my colleague, Michael.
Hello, everybody. My name is Michael Hombach. I'm heading Clinical Science Infectious Diseases. I'm a physician by training, having treated infected patients myself, I've been heading a diagnostic microbiology lab at the University of Zurich. As you see, infectious diseases have always been close to my professional heart, in a way, from that perspective, I want to take you through the strategic importance of infectious diseases as an area. On the first slide, let's start from the immense disease burden that infectious diseases pose to the public. Infectious diseases kill 13 million patients a year, that toll was increased by an additional 2 million last year by COVID. Altogether, that translates also into a massive economic burden, at a baseline, at least $2 trillion a year, again, at least doubled by COVID. How can we improve that situation from a diagnostic perspective?
I want to start you in the next slide from the biological background. Every comprehensive diagnostic solution in infectious diseases has to take care of three aspects. There is a pathogen, bacteria, viruses. There is the immune response, antibodies and T cells, and there is the general host response of our body, for example, the inflammatory response. A comprehensive solution in a disease area needs to care of all those aspects. To make that a bit more tangible for you, I want to show you some clinical utility cases from the patient journey in the next slide. The question on the pathogen end, that physicians and patients have are: Am I actively infected? Even more, can I transmit the virus to my friends, my family, my coworkers?
Those medical need questions are best answered by our PCR assays or the antigen assays, either on point of care or centralized, depending on where the answer and in what speed the answer is needed. Later in the patient journey, on the immunity side, the question is: Have I been exposed? Now, most important, am I immune? Am I now protected? A significant part of the answer is provided by our antibody assays. Again, point of care or centralized. That's an example from COVID again. What about other infectious diseases beyond COVID? On the next slide, you see just a selection of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases of the last decades. From a scientific perspective, I'm absolutely convinced that during the next 5, maybe 10 years, we will see the next big epidemic, and some when, unfortunately, also another pandemic.
Meaning, we need to be prepared. The best preparation is a comprehensive menu and a strong pipeline. On the next slide, you will see in blue our existing broad infectious diseases menu, spreading about a wide range of infectious diseases already, and being expanded by the in-development assays that are shown in green here. I want to highlight that those are covering the three important aspects that I mentioned before: pathogen detection, immune response, host response. That's all contained here. From for a scientist heart, the most exciting part is hidden in the gray boxes, actually. That's the areas of high medical value, innovation, and research. I want to just highlight the big 5 areas in which we are active in the next slide, starting with tuberculosis, the deadliest and largest infectious disease in the world, also a silent pandemic that never stopped.
Sepsis, still killing 20% of all patients that get it. Dengue fever or Lyme disease that are rapidly spreading together with the mosquitoes and the ticks that transmit them, due to climate change and global warming, also through the U.S. and Europe. Also the massively growing problem of antimicrobial resistance. Those five together only account for more than $100 billion of direct healthcare costs per year. There are projections that at least this will triple or more during the next two to three decades. There is obviously a lot to do and a lot to gain here in those areas. I want to show you a concrete example of what we are doing here for the post-COVID era in the next slide.
When the medical question, is it SARS-CoV-2, yes or no, that is causing the coughing of the patient in a doctor's office, turns into the differential diagnosis, which of many viruses is causing that symptoms. Here, the medical need is now differential diagnosis and can be merged and matched with our in-development, multiplexed respiratory panel that will run on the PCR cobas family, that was just introduced by Benjamin. We bring here together the efficiency of the large and enlarged installed base, with an unmet medical need that's now in focus. With that, I hope I was able, during the last 5 minutes, to give you an impression about the strategic medical importance of infectious diseases.
I would like to close with a quote from Peter Doherty, a Nobel Prize laureate in immunology, with whom I very much concur, that working on infectious diseases, having a strong pipeline and solutions here, is really according to Roche's mission of doing now what patients need next. Thanks a lot for your attention. I will pass over to my colleague, Andre, and cardiology.
Thank you, Michael. Hello, good day, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Andre Ziegler, I'm the clinical leader in Roche Diagnostics for cardiovascular disease. With more than 18 million deaths per year, as shown on the first slide, the various cardiac diseases are yet another big burden to our society. Based on the deaths, it's actually the leading cause of death for non-communicable disease. More importantly, the WHO estimates that 30% of these cardiac deaths are premature, cause a considerable economic impact of CHF 1 trillion per year by the various life years lost due to premature mortality and years lived with a disability.
Yet, behind such impressive numbers, there are individual fates, where probably every of us has a case in the family, where a relative, like the grandma, died too early because of one of the four major cardiac disease, such as coronary artery disease, strokes, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation, that altogether affect currently more than 400 million patients. In Roche cardiac, we are therefore committed to develop new solutions to help these 400 million patients who have the disease, but also to a much larger population who are at a high risk to develop this disease. We have a strong ambition to prevent these diseases and also help saving healthcare costs by early and more differentiated diagnosis.
In the next slide, I will show you that the global cardiovascular societies, in particular, ask for very strong clinical evidence and clinical impact data, like in pharma, where the Class I-A recommendation is the highest grade that 1 can achieve, considered as the gold standard. By respecting these fundamental principles of evidence-based medicine, we succeeded to become the market leader for IVDs for our major cardiac products, with a Class I-A recommendation for several of these intended uses and products. In the next 3 slides, I will present 1 example per major cardiac disease, where Roche will grow further and will launch new solutions within the next few weeks and months. Next slide, please.
On the left side, you see the example of heart attack, also called myocardial infarction, where Roche helped the hospitals to make faster and safer decisions, and thus, save considerable costs in the emergency departments. In particular, this disease is acute and very life-threatening, where the emergency rooms of the hospitals are confronted with the situations where only 20% need rapid help, but 80% will have another disease. Because every hour in the ED is expensive, Roche has helped to provide solutions with global experts into pioneering these fast protocols, improving our test performances, and providing sufficient clinical evidence for these Class I-A recommendations.
On the right side, you see a different clinical situation, where up to 5% of non-cardiac surgeries can be complicated by a silent heart attack, where Roche now provides a new solution to identify these patients much earlier, and we here speak about 300 million patients. This is important because 80% of these MIs are asymptomatic because of the concomitant anesthesia. From a business perspective, this expands the potential market from 100 million suspected MIs to an additional 300 million patients at high risk for these myocardial infarctions. On the next slide, I show an example from heart failure, where the disease has a 5-years mortality of up to 70%-80%, and is thus worse than many cancer types. Through many clinical studies supported, we can offer a Class I-A solution for these 64 million patients.
In the next months, we will provide a new solution for more than 450 million patients at a very high risk for heart failure. Where on the right side, you can see the latest clinical data from the PONENTE trial, which is an interventional study, where the basis for therapy is based on a biomarker from Roche. The identification of the patients at high risk and early treatment with standard of drugs, help to prevent the cardiac disease events by more than 65%, which is considerable when compared to usual drug trials. The next slide, I show an example of atrial fibrillation, where Roche is pioneering another disease of 60 million patients globally with IVDs, where the stroke risk is a permanent guest and threat to disability, paralysis, and death.
With new solutions to be launched soon, Roche will innovate many aspects of this patient journey, such as a cost-effective screening solution on the left hand, combined with ECG and other devices. Innovation with new diagnostic biomarkers, shown here in the diagnostic and the risk stratification area, as well as optimizing therapy by providing better risk stratification for bleeding risk, which is one of the major threats of concurrent treatments, and ultimately therapy selection, where we at current run two outcome trials. In the summary slide, next slide, please. I hope I can give you a short overview that Roche is innovating and launching cardiac solutions in the three major cardiac diseases with four launches this year.
Overall, we have the strong ambition to recognize and cure these diseases much early in the patient journey, thus also helping to reduce costs by providing clinical outcome data, which leads in parallel to a larger patient population, as shown on the right. With that, I want to thank you very much for your attention, and I'll hand over to my colleague, Jill.
Thank you, Andre. I really appreciate it. Good day to everyone. I'm Jill German, head of the pathology customer area. Much like you saw from Andre in cardiovascular, on the next slide, what you'll see is that the disease burden in oncology is also forecast to rise significantly. You can see this across all cancer types, and specifically in areas such as lung, breast, colorectal, and prostate. What you can also see is that the statistics really show that across not only incidences and mortality, but the cancer burden on overall cost of care, and then, of course, the personal burden that many of us perhaps have even encountered, is expected to rise.
If we dig into it a bit further on the next page, coincidence to this, increasing burden, what we also see is that the oncology market itself is rapidly evolving. New therapies, new therapy combinations are being put in clinical trials every day, with the intent to really improve patient survival rates. One example demonstrating this trend is cancer immunotherapy. Dramatic progress has really been seen, but there's still so much more that can be done to really improve survival rates and really utilizing insights and new biomarkers. As you see, as we go across the page here, what's going to be required to really continue improving survival rates is not only new biomarkers, but digital tools.
These combined are going to be critically important, what we really expect is that multimodal approaches are going to be required across all categories of in vitro diagnostics, not only sequencing, PCR, as you've heard about immunohistochemistry, and many other areas, tissue multiplexing. All of these will come together with clinical decision support to really help improve the patient experience. Where does Roche play in this, and where do we differentiate? Let's take a look at the next slide, where you can see the Roche portfolio. We lead the industry, spanning all of the in vitro diagnostic modalities that I just mentioned. We play across the entire patient journey that Thomas originally illustrated in his discussion.
Digital pathology algorithms also play a really important role in the portfolio, aiding in really identifying the interpretation of key companion assays. This slide summarizes the number of diagnostic solutions in each patient journey segment, broken down by the diagnostic technology area. As you can see illustrated across the bottom, clinical decision support tools such as Navify Mutation Profiler and the Tumor Board are really an important part of this, as they bring together then integration of multiple diverse streams of input about the patient so that the clinician can really have clarity into optimal clinical decision-making. On the next slide, I share with you the future of the oncology portfolio. You can see that we're focused on further expanding the patient journey solutions that we already provide.
A unique advantage that we really have here is the extensive partnerships that we have with multiple internal and external pharma partners. This really enables us to embed novel diagnostics into pharma registrational trials, ultimately resulting in co-development and approval of multiple novel companion diagnostics. As you can see, a growing number of decision support tools, including clinical and digital pathology algorithms and Navify applications, will be part of this integrated solution across the patient journey. This is part of an overall decision support strategy and vision, which is visualized then on the next slide. Let me, much like Andre did, let me walk you through how a patient journey solution really comes together for lung cancer patients. With 1.8 million newly diagnosed cases every year, it's the most common cause of cancer death.
It remains a very high burden. Our solution provides vital information along that entire journey. If you start with the diagnosis, on the left, with the diagnosis and classification assays such as Napsin A, p40, and ProGRP, aid in the differential diagnosis and sub classification of lung cancer. That ensures that the right diagnosis is made. In the therapy selection area, a multimodal approach has really become the standard of care. This is really important to choose the right therapy. This also helps get patient on the right therapy faster. Eliminate some of the waste in the system that Thomas mentioned earlier as well. This includes EGFR, KRAS, BRAF, and the PCR. Then you can see for the other modalities, what is offered there as well.
In monitoring and surveillance, you can see CYFRA 21-1, ProGRP, EGFR, and PCR all come together to give the clinicians insight throughout the entire patient journey. Pulling it all together, as you look at across the bottom, you can see the decision support tools. I want to take that a little bit further in the next slide, where we really pull together, you know, the decision support tools that exist. We've got the digital pathology algorithms, which really solidify the interpretation of a biomarker. The Navify Mutation Profiler, which really helps identify therapy options and clinical trials that might really fit that particular patient.
The Navify Tumor Board, which pulls together all the data that exists around a patient that come from other areas, such as radiology, and pulls that together so that the tumor board can make a really meaningful decision for that patient. As we look at future oncology decision support tools, access to longitudinal oncology data is critical. We really leverage the vast oncology data that exists to us through our colleagues at Flatiron and Foundation Medicine. We really believe that the workflows and insights along this kind of solution will help us reduce the overall cost of care, and more importantly, to really improve the quality of care for patients. With that, I turn it back over to Birgit. Thank you.
Great, thanks, Jill. We will start the second session, the second Q&A session now. Again, you know, you can ask your question by raising your hands or putting it into the Q&A tool. The first question I have here is from Lisa Clive, from Bernstein, and I think it's a question for Palani, actually. What is the potential threat from digital PCR? Could this be a big disruptor in the molecular market?
Thank you for the question. It's important to start with what are the capabilities of digital PCR. I mean, one of the key things it enables is extremely high sensitivity, and how do we leverage that? When we look at it closely, we see that there are specific applications like genetic screening, prenatal genetic screening, or in select areas of oncology, we are looking at very rare variants. In those cases, that level of single molecule accuracy provides that additional benefit that you would otherwise may not have from quantitative PCR.
In those cases, we do see digital PCR playing an important role, but we see it more as being a complementary solution to both our efforts in our quantitative and otherwise qualitative PCR, the solutions that we shared with you today, and also the sequencing work that we are doing. It's more as a complementary to the other areas that we are looking at. Of course, digital PCR is also part of our pipeline as we look to the future.
Thanks, Palani. Next question, I think is Emmanuel Papadakis from Deutsche. Emmanuel, you can speak now.
Thank you, Birgit. Emmanuel Papadakis from DB. Couple, if I may. Thomas, question for you on the COVID side. We had, obviously, the big uplift in molecular from the PCR testing. You didn't talk much about, how you're doing in immunology. Particularly with regard to both the rapid antigen and the antibody testing offerings, pricing is obviously a lot lower. You have talked about capacity for both of those in the tens of millions per month previously. Perhaps you could just give us an update on how that's proceeding commercially. Question on the oncology side, number one, couple, actually. How penetrated is Navify software now into the addressable U.S. market, and is it profitable yet? Secondly, are you not missing out on significant synergies by the lack of integration for FMI and Flatiron? I believe they're both sitting still within the pharma business rather than diagnostics.
Please correct me if that's wrong. I'll leave it there and come back if there's space at the end. Thank you.
Oh, great. Great, Emmanuel. I think the first one is for Thomas. Maybe the second one about the Navify, Jill would like to answer. Yeah. Okay.
Then I can.
You can do-
close out on the FMI and Flatiron.
Yes. Yeah.
Uh, so, um-
You know, when I gave some information in January, for our full year results, I would say all that information that I gave, is still valid. You know, we saw a very strong Q4. I said we will see even stronger Q1, and we will see also very strong Q2. I would say the one thing that has changed in my assessment is that we will see probably more sales in Q3 and Q4 than I had originally thought, still, back in January. That is simply because in some parts of the world, the vaccination, it takes a bit longer, and there will be more testing being done.
Regarding PCR, clearly, you know, demand is still extremely high, and that will be the technology that will probably stick around the longest. When it comes to the immunology side, specifically on the antibody side, we do see a bit stronger demand now than probably still last year. I think one of the reasons is that, you know, certain countries have said, either you need to have a test or you need to show that you've had antibodies, that you can cross borders, you know? In certain countries, there's actually some more antibody testing because people, instead of being, you know, swabbed for an active infection, they wanna be able to show this antibody testing.
Clearly, you know, we're still talking about low double-digit million, and not, you know, huge amounts yet. This can still change, as we also have cooperation with some of the vaccine companies to really look at what level of antibodies are necessary in order to be protected. So we are following cohorts, where we want to then also demonstrate from which level people need to get revaccinated, and that could trigger more of a demand in terms of antibody testing in the future. Then the question around rapid antigen testing.
Yes, I would say rapid antigen testing is an area that has seen a lot of competitive pressure, and also the prices have gone down specifically in Europe, where, you know, there are more than 100 companies likely on the markets. Here, I would say that, you know, we're doing similarly as in the past, maybe a slight pickup, but we are not at the max of what we can supply at this point in time. This could change if more governments go to more frequent testing, like we have seen in Germany or Austria or U.K., that if some more of these governments go in that direction, there could be even more pickup there. It's a very competitive market, I would say, from a pricing perspective.
Maybe to pick-
Yeah, Jill?
Yeah, I'll pick up on the second part of the question, Emmanuel. You asked about the Navify platform. I would say that it's still early days for all digital insight products and still early days for Navify, although we see good market traction, and we've also seen an increase in adoption with customers who have it, using it with their tumor boards. I think recent numbers show over 30,000 lives being discussed around tumor boards, so that's a good pickup for that particular application. What will really drive it, of course, is, we are absolutely committed to this, and the more meaningful applications we continue to put on it, the more value it will have across the healthcare systems.
Recently, just in 2020, we launched our digital pathology uPath workflow that Ann mentioned earlier, onto the Navify platform for cloud-based use. These are the kinds of tools that really help integrate everything together for our customers who are working with oncology patients. Hopefully that helps. Thomas, I don't know what you might want to add about FMI and Flatiron, but I can tell you from my personal experience, we certainly work closely with them as an organization.
Yeah, I agree. I think you don't necessarily have to integrate it from an organizational perspective. you know, we work very closely with both FMI and Flatiron to leverage all of those synergies. With regards to Navify Tumor Board, I believe we have now more than 100 installations of that. Again, more than 30,000 patients being really treated based on decisions that are being made on that digital solution. We are progressing there as well. Let me just add to the previous question, one or two more points. The other point that I did not mention is that we do see a stronger pickup than expected in our underlying base business. That's actually doing very well.
I think that's an important piece to also understand, that there's a certain level of recovery that from what we've seen last year.
Thank you.
Perfect. Thanks, Emmanuel. The next question I would like to take from Vijay Kumar from Evercore.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question, and I appreciate the effort in putting up the presentation. I did enjoy the 360-degree view, the web view, so thanks for that. I guess Thomas, I had a couple of questions for you. One on your comments around the base business and the antigen comments. A couple of clarifications. What did you guys assume for the base business recovery heading into the guidance? Where are we now? On the antigen side, and I've shared all the comments, but I guess when you look at the question of false positives with PCRs, right, with high Ct values, perhaps you're getting high false positives, perhaps there is a use case for rapid antigen.
you know, can you flesh that out in terms of the reopening side, could we perhaps see a little bit more demand? Is that being priced in or how do you think that should play out? you know, when we all get back to work, are we going to be using rapid antigen tests, I guess, is the question. One on the tech side, I saw the mass spec integrated mass spec product. Is that a new market area for Roche? Who plays in that market? you know, how should they think about market adoption for those kinds of products? Thank you.
Thanks, Vijay. Yes, I think as indicated, the first two questions to Thomas, and then maybe the one on mass spec to Benjamin.
Yeah. On the base business, you know, we did expect kind of a recovery from last year, but for certain, the recovery is higher than what we would have expected. So the base business is doing very well. I don't want to go into more details than that because we don't usually guide on that level. What I still can say is that all that I have communicated in the full year results still holds true. With, you know, things dragging on in terms of vaccination, so we will see probably more of the COVID testing than we had expected, and the base business is doing better.
Those are the two comments that I would like to add to what I said in full year. Now, with the rapid antigen testing and PCR testing, I think you can define it as PCR is am I infected? Rapid antigen is am I infectious? With a PCR test, you can detect down to 25, 30 copies per mil with the best technologies. Some other technologies maybe go in the thousands or maybe even a bit higher than that. With rapid antigen tests, you can detect approximately half a million to a million copies per mil.
Below that, you cannot detect it, and that's why the sensitivity is lower than when you compare it to PCR, and that's why when I see some, you know, statements about high nineties sensitivity, you know, that's just not true. There's no possibility that a rapid antigen can do that, and with our test, this was externally validated by Charité and University of Heidelberg, so, you know, really independent studies also for self-testing. So we are, you know, have a complete independent evaluation of that. I just want to say that because, you know, if you really want to detect someone who's infected, you will have to go with a PCR test.
That being said, knowing if someone is infectious, if you do it multiple times, you will catch the person eventually because the amount of virus, the viral load goes up significantly, very quickly, right? You really have to repeat the testing, very frequently. It's more like a safety net. There are some holes, if you throw it often enough, you're gonna catch whoever you want to catch, right? Yes, you could see there's a certain time period until, you know, people, enough people have been vaccinated, where people may do these screening tests, like in schools and back to work, et cetera. That's kind of the application that we see for rapid antigen tests.
I think once you get to a certain level of vaccination and closer to herd immunity, they will not do this kind of testing, and it will be more important to detect who's infected. Specifically, when people actually have been vaccinated, they can still exhibit disease, they can still have a virus, they can still be getting sick, but usually they don't get as sick, and the viral load is lower. With that, similar to influenza, where the viral load is also not that high, you will need to detect it with more sensitive methods. PCR will definitely continue to play a role there in a decentralized setting and in a centralized setting. I think for the months to come, there will still be an interesting spot for rapid antigen.
Just as with influenza, where this rapid antigen test was, market was declining and the PCR is actually, has been overtaking, you'll see a shift there, specifically because, you know, you will want to know who's infected, and people will not exhibit such high viral loads anymore. There was a question to mass spec. Who wants to take that one?
Yes.
Should I take?
Benjamin, maybe? Do you want to give it a try?
Sure. Well, thanks a lot for the question. I think for us, mass spec is a new and very exciting technology that we will bring to the market.
What is really differentiating is the way that we will bring it to the market, and it's bringing it into the core lab, integrating it into cobas pro integrated solutions, one of these routine instruments that you have seen, in my tour before. It will be fully automated and very easy to use, just as the other diagnostic technologies in the core lab today, which is completely different than the way it is done today. Very manual, somewhere in the dungeon, by highly specialized and highly skilled labor.
Fantastic. That's extremely helpful, guys. Thank you.
Thank you, Vijay. Thanks, Benjamin.
Thank you.
Time is running fast, but I think we'll make time for a few more questions. The next one that I have is from Richard Parkes, from Exane You can talk now.
Hi, thanks very much for taking my questions. Firstly, it's more of a clarification. You discussed a potential single-digit billion COVID testing market post the pandemic. Just wondered if you could clarify what your current COVID testing market share is, and how you'd expect that to develop post easing of the pandemic. The second question is on the diabetes division. Diabetes care is the only segment not included in the new structure. Obviously, it's been dragging on growth in recent years. I'm just wondering, does that signal plans to exit that business longer term, or is there some other reason for that being carved out separately?
Thirdly, on oncology, could you just talk about where we are in terms of market penetration of next generation sequencing overall in the oncology market, and what's your position there, and whether you're comfortable with that and potential longer-term impact on the business? Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Richard. I think the first one, again, you know, for Thomas, and the last one, maybe for Jill or for Palani.
Yes. With regards to rapid antigen testing, I think that market is quite difficult to really assess, because I can tell you there are so many Chinese companies that are on the market, that it's really hard to say. I would say probably from a volume perspective, one of the main suppliers, and also from a financial perspective. On the PCR side, it's clear that there are maybe 2 or 3 suppliers that provide the majority of the testing, and there are a lot of minor players, and we're definitely in that category. I would say from a volume perspective, very much on the frontier.
Diabetes care, your question, you know, we believe in this market because there are a lot of diabetics around the world. The amount of people with diabetes is going to increase simply because it's also a lifestyle disease to a certain degree, but also with Type I, it's also something that sometimes people are born with. From a disease burden perspective, it's one of the main diseases. There's a good opportunity. We are investing into our research and development to make sure that we're set up for the future.
Thanks, Thomas. Palani, for the sequencing one?
Absolutely. On the sequencing side, a couple of comments I would make. First of all, we are looking at the sequencing market very much from a clinical sequencing standpoint, which is what we have also communicated in the past, that is looking at an end-to-end solution all the way from the nucleic acid extraction to that tertiary analysis, the Navify Mutation Profiler that Jill shared earlier. We are making good progress here in that end-to-end solution. We obviously have some of the solutions on the reagent side for sample preparation, library preparation, and so on in the market, through our research side of our business. That end-to-end solution is obviously still a very high-risk proposition. We are working on it actively. We stay committed.
Beyond that, I wouldn't be able to comment at this point in time.
Thanks, Palani. The next question will be from Scott Bardo, Berenberg.
Perfect. Thanks for taking my questions. One question to Michael, please. Thank you very much for taking us through the infectious disease portfolio. It seems now that Roche has a strong offering in both low- plex testing for molecular diagnostic multiplexing for decentralized settings with GenMark, and now you comment on multiplexing in a more high volume setup. Can you give us some sense as to how you think the market for multi-analyte PCR testing is going to shake out between these various different buckets of low- plex, decentralized, and high volume? Second question, please, if possible, for Benjamin. Thanks for showing us the integrated immunoassay clinical chemistry analyzer. Can you help us understand whether Roche has particular market strengths in one of these modalities?
Are you stronger in immunoassay or clinical chemistry? How can you use this combined solution to increase your positioning? Last question, if I can, Birgit, to Thomas. There's been a lot of focus on the molecular diagnostic PCR testing for COVID and the pricing environment that may unfold. Thomas, can you share any thoughts as to pricing for molecular diagnostics for the post-pandemic portfolio? Do you think levels would be now sustainably higher, given government activity here? Or could there be indeed more longer-term pressure due to a rapid entrance of multiple players? Thanks.
Yeah. Should, Birgit, should I take the last one?
Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
maybe also the first one.
Yes.
GenMark?
Yes.
Let me take the first one around the molecular PCR and pricing. I think we are extremely well positioned from multiple aspects. First is the level of automation, and when customers look at the cost, they always do a total cost of ownership calculation, meaning, you know, what do they need in terms of personnel to run that and other potential equipment they may need to run systems, right? Since our system is so automated, the total cost of ownership is very low. With that, we have a protection on our price because, you know, they don't have to add so much on manual labor on top.
I think I gave some examples before on more research-like platforms, where literally the people are burned out because they've been working so much to really do all these manual steps. Furthermore, we actually what we've done in terms of pricing is from the get-go of this pandemic, we said, you know, to be very clear, that we want to have a contribution to society and in this pandemic, to fighting this pandemic. We are not going to be a company that increases prices in a pandemic, right? What we've done is we took from all of our tests, we did, you know, take the average price we have in our portfolio, and we applied that price.
With that, we priced it lower than many other companies that have gone out with COVID tests. If there, if we see an erosion in terms of pricing, it's gonna hit others much harder than us, given that A, we're coming out with huge volumes now in Q2 and Q3. B, because, I mean, others would have to move to our price level, which is significant difference, before we have to move on our price. It will hurt them definitely much more. Then you asked, do I believe that we will have, you know, higher or lower pricing in other parts of the portfolio after this pandemic?
First, let me say, I don't believe it's necessarily gonna be higher pricing, but I could see that, you know, maybe we'll see faster reimbursements for new tests, for screening, for things like cervical cancer or screening for hepatitis C, you know, which also causes cancer. I would see we see more of a volume effect. That's one element. The second element goes back to what I said earlier, with the high level of automation and the lower total cost of ownership, people do a total cost of ownership calculation, and we do fairly well, compared to that. There are really two, three players, I would say, in the market that can somewhat compete on that.
Compared to rapid antigen, which is a rather, I would say, it's easier technology to manufacture and also to develop, and that's why you have so many different companies. I can tell you the amount of money that we spent on developing cobas 6800, cobas 8800 goes on in the hundreds of CHF million and many years, right? It's from a copy perspective, it's much, much more difficult to copy than you would see on the rapid antigen side, where there was definitely more price erosion. You had the question about multiplex and how GenMark fits into the overall concept. I think the special part about the GenMark technology is that it can multiplex 40 different respiratory samples, and it provides a result in 90 minutes.
If you have severely ill patients, where you need to be treating these patients quickly, you need a result very quickly. With screening all of the different pathogens, this is where this technology fits. This is not a space that we have actually played in in the past. It has been dominated really by one player in the past. We believe that, you know, bringing in, you know, our global footprints, where GenMark has been largely only present in the U.S., we can expand to other markets in the world. We can support in automation of manufacturing, in raw materials, et cetera. We can bring in certain expertise with which this technology can fully blossom. This is where we see the big opportunity.
After all, I mean, if you look at the molecular space, this high multiplexing market in a stat way, stat meaning you load the sample anytime, which you can do with GenMark, and you get results in 90 minutes. This is a market that's growing 20% and more every year, so it's a really attractive market.
Thanks, Thomas. Benjamin, do you want to take the one on immunoassay analyzers and breadth of menu?
Sure. Thank you very much. First of all, let me stress that we were the inventors of the integrated clinical chemistry and immunochemistry analyzers back in 2002. Only in the last few years, competitors started to copy this successful concept. You have seen we have consequently pursued new innovations using this concept now with cobas pure integrated solutions for the lower volume customers, as well as cobas pro integrated solutions for the medium to high throughput customers. We integrated this business to bring this together and sell it together. To answer your question, if you have particular strengths in one or the other, we're strong and we are the market leader in both businesses.
Thanks, Benjamin. Great. I think with this, we actually need to close the second Q&A sessions. I would very much encourage you know, for your remaining questions, just send them to us by email and we will certainly get back to you and answer them. I would like to hand it over now to Thomas for the closing words. Thomas?
Thank you very much. Very good. I believe we have two slides left, and I'll make it very short. First, around point of departure, it's clear that I think we have demonstrated that healthcare is shifting to reward more improved patient outcomes and reduced cost of care. We really need to tackle both in order to meet the needs of the healthcare system. Only if you meet the needs of the healthcare system, you can be really successful. We also believe that we are very well positioned to address these evolving healthcare needs because we have the broadest menu of different markers, but we also have access to the broadest different modalities of technologies.
With that, we can really support in finding the solutions that governments and the hospitals are looking for to improve patient outcomes. In our strategy, we want to expand from our diagnostic solutions to really go and also support in taking this data and making better clinical decision support decisions based on all of the data. We also believe that in the future there will be more of an ask of us to help manage diseases more proactively, specifically chronic diseases. In order to do that, we will continue our strong investment in innovation, and we'll even invest more by really improving on the efficiency and effectiveness of our organization, and also invest more also in market access and partnering activities.
Overall, the indications are that we will contribute with that to the Roche ambitions. It also means that we'll shift investments, as I mentioned, and realign the operating model to implement strategy. If you go to the last slides, and here, just like I say, we will continue to drive our focus on growing our market share organically and inorganically, and really shifting our investments into our strategic priorities. Really looking at, you know, where can we create most value with the money we have? Really, taking things that maybe don't have such a big impact on customers and patients, and shifting it to areas where we can have higher impact. With that, really looking at, you know, which part of our pop...
company actually has direct impact on customer value and really focusing our investments there. I would like to thank you for the attendance today, and I hand over to Carl for the last remaining words.
Thanks a lot, Thomas. I think what we saw today is that diagnosis is not a nice to have, but a must to have in a business. We got a fantastic overview of the world's leading IVD business. The demonstration in the 360 was really live and was really impressive. I mean, really well done. I wanted to thank all the speakers in explaining their business so easily, so clearly, so that everybody, even myself, could understand it. Thanks for that. Peter, I wanted to thank you. I know how much work went into this event. That was very well done.
I also wanted to thank Jeff, John, Luca, Uno for giving input into the presentations, also helping with the formatting. Last but not least, to Eva and Janet for helping with the organizational set up here. I wish everybody a nice day. Thanks for your interest in Roche. Stay healthy and all the best to you. Bye-bye.