Reshaping Chronic Disease Management: From Pipeline to Prevention

Mexico's healthcare system faces a growing problem in the shape of chronic diseases, which represent the country's main morbidity and mortality causes. This issue keeps driving multiple stakeholders from the public and private sectors to search for ways to increase access to healthcare services, while managing the growing costs of such services.

Chronic diseases are driving a growing share of Mexico's health spending, with diabetes and hypertension control rates still falling short. As pharmaceutical, insurance, and technology leaders convene to discuss the shift from treatment to prevention, the central question is not whether Mexico's chronic disease model needs to change, but how fast the country can move from a system built around the pipeline to one built around the patient.

Chronic diseases have become a persistent strain on Mexico's healthcare system. Type 2 diabetes, for example, affects 17% of Mexican adults, with 11.6% already diagnosed and 5.4% still undiagnosed, while hypertension reaches 29.1% of the adult population. Among those already diagnosed with diabetes, only 33%  achieve glycemic control, and just 60.1% of treated hypertension patients keep their blood pressure under control, exposing wide gaps between diagnosis and effective management. 

"In Mexico, 21 million people have high blood pressure, 14 million have diabetes, and 9 million have chronic kidney disease. We must thus offer integrated metabolic treatment," says Rafael Suárez, Vice President Latin America and General Manager Mexico, TEVA Pharmaceuticals. Suárez points out that patients rarely deal with a single condition in isolation, creating a complex burden for a public system struggling to raise national life expectancy past 75 years. "Once we understand the dimension, we have to look at how the government can address it, state resources alone will not be enough," he adds.

Type 2 diabetes caused 3.1 million healthy years of life lost in Mexico in 2021, equivalent to 6.6% of the country's total disease burden, with 66.3% of that burden attributed to obesity. Obesity prevalence among Mexican adults rose 42.2% between 2000 and 2018, with morbid obesity climbing even faster, at 96.5% over the same period. Metabolic and cardiometabolic disease has consequently become less a matter of individual treatment and more a systemic cost driver, one that patent and generic drug access alone cannot resolve without earlier detection and sustained adherence.

"We invest heavily in reactive care rather than asking ourselves how to anticipate and control a health condition beforehand. Moving to a preventive state is not a unilateral effort; it requires an entire ecosystem to help drive this mindset shift. In healthcare, budgets are never enough, and working together as a whole will be critical," says Esmeralda Rodríguez, Head of Mexico, Viatris.

Noncommunicable diseases cause 75% of deaths worldwide. Directing an additional 1% of GDP toward public health spending, with at least 40% aimed at prevention and treatment, could save close to 5 million lives a year in low- and middle-income countries, reports Airfinity. The Airfinity report argues that over 1,400 medicines for chronic and noncommunicable diseases have been approved over the past decade, with another 9,600 currently in development, a pipeline that is rapidly outpacing the health systems built to deliver it.

"For chronic illnesses, the objective should not only be to attend to the symptoms, but to learn how to reduce their progression and limit complications," says Sergio Vargas, General Manager, AbbVie Mexico. Vargas emphasizes that therapeutic solutions must be paired with comprehensive models across the patient journey, taking into account quality of life, economic productivity, and healthcare resources.

"As an industry, we must move beyond exclusively focusing on selling treatments and think about what types of products would be required for holistic prevention," says Guy Jean Savoir, President, CANIFARMA. Savoir emphasizes the need to evaluate early diagnosis, nutrition, and environmental factors alongside standard care, noting that current global health systems assess the cost per dose rather than establishing transparent mechanisms to fund preventive interventions. 

Meanwhile, digital tools are emerging as the connective layer between innovative therapies and daily patient behavior. Wearable devices, IoT-enabled monitoring, and AI-supported adherence platforms are increasingly positioned to flag complications before they become acute, particularly for cardiometabolic patients who require continuous, rather than periodic, oversight.  "Digital tools must be integrated into care mechanisms, and their effectiveness measured with clear evidence. Technology is a mechanism, not the objective; the objective is to improve the patient's quality of life in an ecosystem that allows for personalized care aligned with their needs," says Vargas.

Carlos Kane, Senior Director of Access and Corporate Affairs, Eli Lilly, echoes the importance of cross-sector integration: "Innovation in medicine must continue and gain strength, but on tech solutions that support patients in other areas, generating alliances is crucial." He points to collaborative platforms like Lilly's initiative with Endeavor to foster local health technology innovation as key drivers for scaling patient-centered tools.

Mexico already has a domestic program that targets community-based chronic disease screening: PREVENIMSS, IMSS's two-decade-old preventive care program. However, researchers say the program still needs to adopt stronger secondary prevention measures and new digital resources to meet the country's chronic disease profile. Scaling a similar model with AI-supported detection into resource-limited areas, rather than building an entirely new infrastructure, could enable the expansion of early diagnosis across the country.

"We have to strengthen the country's primary care system, which means dignifying, professionalizing, and equipping first-contact physicians with better tools. We currently operate with a fragmented primary care network, which prevents healthcare workers from properly catching the signals before a patient's condition escalates,” Savoir says.

Mónica Palomanes, General Manager, Roche Pharma México, highlights how AI can streamline this frontline screening without overburdening existing staff. "In breast cancer screening, for example, there is a shortage of radiologists worldwide. AI solutions have allowed us to triage high-risk patients and reduce diagnostic times down to two days, a huge shift for patients living far from specialized centers. AI does not replace the specialist; it empowers primary care to catch suspicious cases early, when treatment is still effective,” she says.

To bring these solutions closer to the patient, the regulatory and commercial pieces still need to align. Bringing both patented and generic medicines to a broader share of Mexico's public and private sectors would depend on distribution models that can reach metabolic and cardiometabolic patients outside major urban hospitals, while decentralized, community-level partnerships supported by AI could offer a route to earlier detection in underserved regions.

Palomanes says, using the example of Roche's collaboration with the Mexican Federation of Hemophilia, that decentralized specialty care offers a practical blueprint for chronic conditions. "Our health system is often focused on treating acute episodes rather than long-term management," she says. "In conditions like hemophilia, what impacts a patient's life most is precisely what remains unseen, yet care has historically concentrated in major urban centers,” adds Palomares, noting that through this joint initiative, 13 specialized clinics were established across Mexico to deliver local, multidisciplinary support for patients living far from primary hospital hubs. This model brings continuous care directly to where patients live and work, providing a clear framework for how metabolic and cardiometabolic therapies can reach underserved communities before acute complications escalate.

Supplying these decentralized networks also requires stronger local supply chains and treatments designed for long-term compliance. "If we can bring manufacturing closer to the country, it helps secure supply. When thinking about long-term adherence, innovative combination therapies, combining multiple molecules into a single treatment, make it significantly easier for patients to stick to their regimens and streamline distribution,” Suárez says.

For the pharmaceutical, insurance, and technology industries, the test is whether chronic disease management can evolve beyond treating the condition itself to addressing its long-term impact on patients' lives.