So you’ve seen valuations in medtech, significantly be impacted by the fear, like you said, about the reduction in these market sizes, whether it’s going to happen in the next few years or it’s going to happen in decades from now. And I guess my view there is that, I understand that new technologies will naturally cause us to think differently about the future. And I think early on, those initial thoughts about the future are generally impacted more by emotion than facts and data. And I think that’s what you’re seeing right now today as it relates to GLP-1 and medtech markets. I think there’s a — if you think about it long-term here on the bigger picture, I think there’s a fundamental mismatch here on revenue and revenue forecasts that we’re seeing versus potential impact of patient and patient temps.
I’ve looked at the consensus forecast for this class of drugs and I’m looking out 4 years to 5 years here, they seem to be in that $60 billion to $70 billion range, which is pretty significant as a category. It’s probably one of the largest categories that we’ve ever seen. But then if you take the pricing, at least the public pricing that we’ve seen, whether it’s the US pricing or the lower international pricing and you convert that into user bases and back into the numbers. I mean, we’re looking at 10 million to 15 million people in the next 4 years to 5 years that will be on this drug. That’s a real small fraction of the size of these medical device markets that we’re talking about, right? There’s about half a billion people with diabetes, maybe another half a billion people that got cardiovascular disease, and maybe there’s an overlap of people with diabetes and cardiovascular, but still you’re talking tens of millions of people with maybe a billion or under a billion people.
So I think there’s a little bit of a mismatch there in terms of how we’re seeing this impact equating the revenue and the potential growth of the revenue with the patient pool tamp. So that’s one big area I would say. I think there’s another question here of just about the question of coverage and obviously these drugs have great outcomes and great outcomes impact and then the question is, what’s the appropriate cost to achieve that outcome? I’ve seen a lot of discussions and new stories about payers and what the payers are going to do and insurance companies and PBMs and pharmacy chains. Those aren’t payers. The real payers are the employees, the employers and the companies that pay for these. And I think as you look at companies and higher medical expense costs, inflation, I think that’s going to be a factor as we go into next year also.
So I think those are, I’d say, the bigger aspect here on the long term. On the short term though, as you mentioned, on the diabetes, I actually see it as a positive impact on the diabetes business. As I mentioned in the opening remarks, we completed an analysis recently that showed a significant number of Libre users were on these drugs, and the data showed that those that are using both products are actually using more of those both products when you compare them to other users. They tend to wear Libre sensors more often and they tend to take their GLP-1 medication more frequently. And I think that’s a great thing, because higher therapy compliance ultimately is going to improve health outcomes. And that’s not different, Robbie. This complementary relationship [indiscernible] very well.
