The Global Burden of Disease Study: How Life Sciences Companies Use It, From Pipeline to Pricing

If you sit in enough pharma strategy meetings, one dataset comes up again and again: the Global Burden of Disease study. Run by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, it is the most comprehensive attempt to measure how, where and why people lose health around the world, and it has become a common reference point from early portfolio strategy all the way to pricing negotiations.

This guide explains what the GBD study measures, how life sciences companies use it across the product lifecycle, and the limits to keep in mind before you put its numbers in a forecast or a payer dossier.

What the GBD Study Is

The latest round, GBD 2023, was published in The Lancet on 18 October 2025 (GBD 2023 paper). It draws on more than 310,000 data sources, about 30% of them new to this round, including vital registration, surveys, disease registries, hospital records and published studies. Estimates are produced for 204 countries and territories and around 660 subnational locations, by age and sex.

GBD reports deaths, prevalence and incidence, but its signature measure is the disability-adjusted life year (DALY). One DALY is one year of healthy life lost. It adds together years of life lost to early death (YLL) and years lived with disability (YLD), so conditions such as depression or low back pain, which rarely kill but cause enormous disability, sit on the same scale as heart disease or cancer.

IHME makes the results available through free online tools: GBD Compare for interactive charts and maps, the GBD Results tool for downloading estimates, and the Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) for the underlying sources and methods (IHME).

How Life Sciences Companies Use GBD

Because GBD covers almost every condition, country and age group with one consistent method, it gives teams across a company a shared starting point. Here is where it typically shows up.

1. Choosing Where to Innovate

Portfolio and R&D strategy teams use DALYs and trends to compare unmet need across therapeutic areas and regions. Rising burdens, such as diabetes, chronic kidney disease or dementia in ageing populations, help make the case for investment, while risk-factor data (obesity, high blood pressure, air pollution) point to where future burden is heading.

2. Sizing Markets and Building Forecasts

Prevalence and incidence by country, age and sex are a common input to the top of a patient-based forecast, especially in markets where local epidemiology is thin or out of date. GBD gives a consistent baseline to compare countries, which analysts then refine with diagnosis, treatment and pricing assumptions.

3. Planning Clinical Development

Clinical teams use burden and incidence data to choose indications and countries, judge how easily patients can be recruited, and make sure trial populations reflect the people who carry the disease. It also helps justify development in regions that are under-represented in trials.

4. Building the Value Story

Health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) teams cite GBD to describe the burden of a disease in global value dossiers and payer submissions. DALYs feed cost-effectiveness analysis, particularly the “cost per DALY averted” measure used by many global health funders and low- and middle-income country decision-makers.

“GBD gives every team, from R&D to market access, the same map of where the world’s health needs lie.”

5. Pricing and Market Access After Approval

Once a product is on the market, burden data support conversations with payers and governments about priority and value. Country-level estimates also inform tiered pricing and access programs in low- and middle-income countries, where the gap between burden and treatment is often widest.

6. Medical Affairs, Policy and Corporate Strategy

Medical affairs and policy teams use GBD in disease-awareness work and advocacy. Corporate teams draw on it for access-to-medicine and ESG reporting, and business development teams use it to sense-check the epidemiology behind licensing and acquisition targets.

Stage	How GBD is used	Typical metrics
Portfolio strategy	Compare unmet need by therapeutic area and region; spot rising burdens	DALYs, YLDs, trends since 1990
Market sizing and forecasting	Epidemiology baseline for patient-based forecasts	Prevalence and incidence by age, sex and country
Clinical development	Choose indications and countries; plan representative trial populations	Incidence, deaths, risk-factor exposure
Value and HEOR	Burden of disease in dossiers; cost-effectiveness models	DALYs, YLLs, YLDs, cost per DALY averted
Pricing and access	Payer and government discussions; tiered pricing and access programs	Burden by country and income group
Policy and corporate strategy	Advocacy, access-to-medicine and ESG reporting, business development diligence	Risk-attributable burden, trends

Know the Limits

GBD is powerful, but it is easy to misuse. Before relying on it, keep these points in mind:

• Estimates, not counts. Where data are sparse, figures are modelled. Report the uncertainty intervals, not just the central estimate.
• Broad categories. GBD causes are often wider than a product’s target population. A cancer or disease subtype may need other sources to size.
• Burden is not a market. High burden does not mean patients are diagnosed, treated or able to pay. Forecasts still need diagnosis, treatment and pricing data.
• Rounds are revised. Each round re-estimates the whole series back to 1990, so don’t mix figures from different rounds.
• Licensing. GBD data are free for non-commercial use. Commercial use, including in client work or paid products, generally needs a licence from IHME, so check the data use agreement first.

What This Means for Your Strategy

The GBD study is not a forecast or a market model, but it is the best common language available for describing health need around the world. Used well, with its uncertainty and limits in view, it can anchor portfolio choices, sharpen forecasts and strengthen the value story with payers.

Terraforme Biosciences helps life sciences companies and investors turn epidemiology and market data into strategy. Explore our strategy and business development services or our M&A support.